Department of Motor Vehicles
In the United States, a department of motor vehicles is a state-level government agency that administers vehicle registration and driver licensing. Similar departments exist in Canada under different names; the name "DMV" is not used in every state or area, nor are the traditional DMV functions handled by a single agency in every state, but the generic term is universally understood in the context of driver's license issuance and renewal. Driver licensing and vehicle registration in the United States are handled by the state government in all states but Hawaii, where local governments perform DMV functions. In Canada, driver licensing and vehicle registration are handled at the provincial government level; the Uniform Vehicle Code prefers the name "Department of Motor Vehicles". The acronym "DMV" is most used to describe the agency. Unless otherwise indicated below, one agency or division regulates driver licensing, vehicle registration, vehicle titles; the location of a department or division of motor vehicles within the structure of a state's government tends to vary widely.
Hawaii is the only U. S. state. In Kentucky, the Transportation Cabinet sets the policies and designs for licenses and vehicle registration. In Tennessee, the Department of Revenue and the Driver License Services Division of the Department of Safety and Homeland Security establishes policies and designs for licenses and vehicle registration, but the actual registration and licensing are handled by county clerks. In the District of Columbia, not part of any state, the DMV is part of the city government. In Virginia, the Department of Motor Vehicles handles both driver licensing and vehicle registration, while the Virginia State Police and the Department of Environmental Quality administer safety inspection and emission inspection, respectively; the program is administered by the state. In some states, the DMV is not a separate cabinet-level department, but instead is a division or bureau within a larger department. Departments that perform DMV functions include the Department of Justice, the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Revenue, the Department of Transportation.
In New Hampshire and Tennessee, the Division of Motor Vehicles and the Driver License Services Division is a division of each state's Department of Safety. In Vermont, the Department of Motor Vehicles is a subunit of the state Agency of Transportation; some states do not separate DMV functions into distinct organizational entities at all, but bundle them into responsibilities assigned to an existing government agency. For example, in the state of Washington, the Department of Licensing is responsible for driver's licenses and vehicle and boat registrations in addition to most other business and occupational licensing. In Maine and Illinois, the Secretary of State's offices perform responsibilities that would be handled by the DMV in other states. All long-term residents of a state who wish to operate motor vehicles must possess a driver's license issued by their state DMV, their vehicles must show license plates issued by that agency. Armed Forces active duty service members are an exception to this general rule.
These individuals have the option of retaining the license and vehicle registration of their legal residence or obtaining a new license and registration locally. Some states let out-of-state college students maintain their existing license and/or registration. Vehicles owned by the federal government register with the General Services Administration, rather than a state. Drivers of these vehicles must still be licensed with their home state, however; the Office of Foreign Missions at the U. S. Department of State has a Diplomatic Motor Vehicles program that issues driver's licenses to foreign diplomats and their dependents, registers their vehicles, issues special diplomatic license plates. In countries with no national identification card, driver's licenses have become the de facto identification card for many purposes, DMV agencies have become the agency responsible for verifying identity in their respective states the identity of non-drivers; the REAL ID Act of 2005 is an attempt to provide a national standard for identification cards in the United States as identification cards are used in everyday life.
In some states, besides conducting the written and hands-on driving tests that are a prerequisite to earning a driver's license, DMVs regulate private driving schools and their instructors. All DMVs issue their state's Driver's manual, which all drivers are expected to abide by. Knowledge of the driver's manual is tested prior to issuing a license. DMVs are responsible for providing an identification number for vehicles, either with a permanent vehicle registration plate or temporary
Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment
"Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment" is the thirteenth episode of The Simpsons' second season; the 26th episode of the series overall, it aired on the Fox network in the United States on February 7, 1991. In the episode, Homer gets an illegal cable hook-up. Despite the family's enjoyment of the new channels, Lisa becomes suspicious that they are stealing cable, her suspicions are confirmed by Reverend Lovejoy and she protests by no longer watching television. Meanwhile, Bart manages to tune into a sexually explicit adult movie channel, Homer invites his friends over to watch a boxing match, but Lisa's protest gets to him, he decides not to watch cuts the cable. The episode was directed by Rich Moore, it is based on the Eighth Commandment. The episode marks the debut of Troy McClure, voiced by Phil Hartman and based on the typical "washed up" Hollywood actor; the character Drederick Tatum, one of the boxers in the boxing match Homer and his friends watch makes his first appearance on the show in this episode.
In its original broadcast, "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment" received a Nielsen rating of 15.2, finishing 25th the week it aired. It received favorable reviews from critics and became the second episode of The Simpsons to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. After seeing Ned Flanders reject an offer from a crooked cable man to get an illegal cable hook-up for $50, Homer chases after the cable man and takes the offer. Homer spends a lot of time watching the television along with his family. Lisa, feels suspicious about the cable hook-up. Following a Sunday school lesson regarding the existence and nature of Hell, Lisa becomes terrified of violations of the Ten Commandments, the adherence to which she is assured will keep one's soul safe from Hell, she fears. Lisa begins to oppose other examples of common thievery all around her convincing Marge to pay the cost on two grapes she sampled in a grocery store, much to the clerk's chagrin. Lisa pays a visit to Reverend Lovejoy at church, where he suggests that Lisa cannot turn her father in to the police for the illegal hook-up, since she must continue to "Honour Thy Father and Thy Mother", according to the Fifth Commandment.
He instead encourages Lisa to not watch anything on Homer's cable hook-up, setting a good example that he hopes others will follow. Marge pleads with Homer to either cut the cable or pay for it, but he refuses to do either, saying that the cable will stay as long as he desires. Meanwhile, Bart sets up posters on the back door for his showing of a porn channel for 50 cents, but he is caught a few seconds by Homer, who forbids him from doing it. Homer sees a commercial for "The Bout to Knock the Other Guy Out!", a much-anticipated boxing match in which Drederick Tatum will fight for the World Heavyweight Championship. Homer invites all of his friends to come over and watch the fight. Lisa tries to boycott the party, so this results in Homer making her stay outside on the lawn. Homer’s conscience bothers him, more in the form of his daughter's distress than a moral objection to stealing cable due to a hallucination that he goes to prison for stealing cable, he gives in to Lisa's protests, begrudgingly choosing not to watch the last minutes of the fight, Marge and Maggie join them as well.
Bart refuses to give in. The family sits the fight out and when everyone has left, Homer hesitantly cuts his cable hook-up while ignoring Bart's objection, but he accidentally ends up cutting the power to the whole neighborhood, only to get the right cable on the third attempt, resulting in the episode abruptly ending showing static. "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment" was written by freelance writer Steve Pepoon and directed by Rich Moore, it was going to be named "Homer vs. the 8th Commandment", but the writers decided to include Lisa in the title because they wanted the cast to feel as if all their characters were represented on the show. The episode is based on the Eighth Commandment, one of the Ten Commandments; the Simpsons writer Al Jean said that "whenever people come up to me and say that The Simpsons is just sort of this outrageous show that has no moral center, I always point them to this, where Homer gets an illegal cable hook-up and suffers enormous consequences."The Simpsons writer Mike Reiss feels that episodes such as "Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment" are his favorite episodes to write because they have a "solid theme or an issue", that one can "discuss endlessly and just have it present itself in so many different ways."
Producer Jeff Martin said that the writers tried to use a "very strict construction of the Eighth Commandment," considering cable theft to be "essentially a victimless crime." "Homer vs. the 8th Commandment" was produced at a time when illegal cable hookups were becoming commonplace in many homes. This episode inspired the season four episode "Homer the Heretic", in which Homer stops going to church on Sundays. Based on the Fourth Commandment, "remember the Sabbath and keep it holy", that episode originated when Jean commented to Reiss, "We had a lot of luck with Homer stealing cable, so maybe we could look to other commandments?"The episode marks the debut appearance of the character Troy McClure, voiced by Phil Hartman. McClure was based on the typical "washed up" Hollywood actor, B movie actors Troy Donahue and Doug McClure served as in
Dan Castellaneta
Daniel Louis Castellaneta is an American actor, voice actor and screenwriter, best known for his long-running role as Homer Simpson on the Fox Broadcasting Company animated sitcom The Simpsons. He voices many other characters for the show including Abraham "Grampa" Simpson, Barney Gumble, Krusty the Clown, Sideshow Mel, Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby and Hans Moleman. Castellaneta had roles in several other programs, including Futurama for Fox Broadcasting Company and Darkwing Duck for ABC, The Adventures of Dynamo Duck for Fox Kids, Back to the Future: The Animated Series for CBS, Aladdin for Toon Disney, Taz-Mania for Warner Bros. Animation and Hey Arnold! for Nicktoons. In 1999, he appeared in the Christmas special Olive, the Other Reindeer, won an Annie Award for his portrayal of the Postman, he released a comedy album I Am Not Homer, wrote and starred in a one-person show titled Where Did Vincent van Gogh? Daniel Louis Castellaneta was born on October 29, 1957 at Roseland Community Hospital on Chicago's south side and was raised in River Forest and Oak Park, Illinois.
He is of Italian descent, born to Louis Castellaneta. Louis Castellaneta was an amateur actor. Castellaneta became adept at impressions at a young age and his mother enrolled him in an acting class when he was sixteen years old, he would do impressions of the artists. He was a "devotee" of the works of many performers, including Alan Arkin and Barbara Harris and directors Mike Nichols and Elaine May, he attended Oak Park and River Forest High School and upon graduation, started attending Northern Illinois University in the fall of 1975. Castellaneta studied art education, with the goal of becoming an art teacher, he would entertain his students with his impressions. Castellaneta was a regular participant in The Ron Petke and His Dead Uncle Show, a radio show at NIU; the show helped Castellaneta hone his skills as a voice-over actor. He recalled "We did parodies and sketches, we would double up on, so you learned to switch between voices. I got my feet wet doing voiceover; the show was just audible, but we didn't care.
It was the fact that we got a chance to do it and write our own material." He auditioned for an improvisational show. A classmate first thought Castellaneta would "fall on his face with improvisation" but soon "was churning out material faster than could make it work." Castellaneta started acting after his graduation from Northern Illinois University in 1979. He decided, he began taking improvisation classes. He started to work at The Second City, an improvisational theatre in Chicago, in 1983 and continued to work there until 1987. During this period, he did voice-over work with his wife for various radio stations, he auditioned for a role in The Tracey Ullman Show and his first meeting underwhelmed Tracey Ullman and the other producers. Ullman decided to fly to Chicago to watch Castellaneta perform, his performance that night was about a blind man who tries to become a comedian and Ullman recalled that although there were flashier performances that night, Castellaneta made her cry. She was impressed and Castellaneta was hired.
Castellaneta is most famous for his role as Homer Simpson on the longest running animated television show The Simpsons. The Tracey Ullman Show included a series of animated shorts about a dysfunctional family. Voices were needed for the shorts, so the producers decided to ask Castellaneta and fellow cast member Julie Kavner to voice Homer and Marge Simpson rather than hire more actors. Homer's voice began as a loose impression of Walter Matthau, but Castellaneta could not "get enough power behind that voice" and could not sustain his Matthau impression for the nine- to ten-hour long recording sessions, he tried to find something easier, so he "dropped the voice down", developed it into a more versatile and humorous voice during the second and third season of the half-hour show. Castellaneta's normal speaking voice has no similarity to Homer's. To perform Homer's voice, Castellaneta lowers his chin to his chest, is said to "let his IQ go."Castellaneta likes to stay in character during recording sessions, tries to visualize a scene in his mind so that he can give the proper voice to it.
Despite Homer's fame, Castellaneta claims he is recognized in public, "except, maybe, by a die-hard fan." Castellaneta provides the voices for numerous other characters, including Grampa Simpson, Barney Gumble, Krusty the Clown, Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby, Hans Moleman, Sideshow Mel, Kodos, the Squeaky Voiced Teen and Gil Gunderson. Krusty's voice is based on Chicago television's Bob Bell, who had a raspy voice and portrayed WGN-TV's Bozo the Clown from 1960 to 1984. Barney's trademark is a loud belch. During early recording sessions for the show, he recorded a new version of the belch for every episode but discovered that it was not easy for him to do it every time a script called for it. Castellaneta chose a recording of what he believed was his best belch and told the producers to make that the standard. Groundskeeper Willie's first appearance was in the season two episode "Principal Charming"; the character was written as an angry janitor and Castellaneta was assigned to perform the voice.
He did not know what voice to use and Sam Simon, directing at the time, suggested he use an accent. Castellaneta first tried, he tried a "big dumb Swede", rejected. For his third try, he used the vo
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation is an American film studio, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of The Walt Disney Company. The studio is located on its namesake studio lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. For over 84 years, it was one of the "Big Six" major American film studios. In 1985, the studio was acquired by News Corporation, succeeded by 21st Century Fox in 2013 following the spin-off of its publishing assets. In 2019, The Walt Disney Company acquired 20th Century Fox through its merger with 21st Century Fox. Starting with Breakthrough, all studio releases will be distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Disney now owns the rights to the studio's pre-merger film library. Twentieth Century Pictures' Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck left United Artists over a stock dispute, began merger talks with the management of financially struggling Fox Film, under President Sidney Kent. Spyros Skouras manager of the Fox West Coast Theaters, helped make it happen.
The company had been struggling since founder William Fox lost control of the company in 1930. The new company, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, began trading on May 31, 1935. Kent remained at the company, joining Zanuck. Zanuck replaced Winfield Sheehan as the company's production chief; the company established a special training school. Lynn Bari, Patricia Farr and Anne Nagel were among 14 young women "launched on the trail of film stardom" on August 6, 1935, when they each received a six-month contract with 20th Century Fox after spending 18 months in the school; the contracts included a studio option for renewal for as long as seven years. For many years, 20th Century Fox claimed to have been founded in 1915, the year Fox Film was founded. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary. However, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding though most film historians agree it was founded in 1915; the company's films retained the 20th Century Pictures searchlight logo on their opening credits as well as its opening fanfare, but with the name changed to 20th Century-Fox.}
After the merger was completed, Zanuck signed young actors to help carry 20th Century-Fox: Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Carmen Miranda, Don Ameche, Henry Fonda, Gene Tierney, Sonja Henie, Betty Grable. Fox hired Alice Faye and Shirley Temple, who appeared in several major films for the studio in the 1930's. Higher attendance during World War II helped Fox overtake RKO and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to become the third most profitable film studio. In 1941, Zanuck was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the U. S. Signal Corps and assigned to supervise production of U. S. Army training films, his partner, William Goetz, filled in at Fox. In 1942, Spyros Skouras succeeded Kent as president of the studio. During the next few years, with pictures like The Razor's Edge, Gentleman's Agreement, The Snake Pit and Pinky, Zanuck established a reputation for provocative, adult films. Fox specialized in adaptations of best-selling books such as Ben Ames Williams' Leave Her to Heaven, starring Gene Tierney, the highest-grossing Fox film of the 1940s.
Fox produced film versions of Broadway musicals, including the Rodgers and Hammerstein films, beginning with the musical version of State Fair, the only work that the partnership wrote for films. After the war, with the advent of television, audiences drifted away. 20th Century-Fox held on to its theaters until a court-mandated "divorce". That year, with attendance at half the 1946 level, 20th Century-Fox gambled on an unproven gimmick. Noting that the two film sensations of 1952 had been Cinerama, which required three projectors to fill a giant curved screen, "Natural Vision" 3D, which got its effects of depth by requiring the use of polarized glasses, Fox mortgaged its studio to buy rights to a French anamorphic projection system which gave a slight illusion of depth without glasses. President Spyros Skouras struck a deal with the inventor Henri Chrétien, leaving the other film studios empty-handed, in 1953 introduced CinemaScope in the studio's groundbreaking feature film The Robe. Zanuck announced in February 1953.
To convince theater owners to install this new process, Fox agreed to help pay conversion costs. Seeing the box-office for the first two CinemaScope features, The Robe and How to Marry a Millionaire, Warner Bros. MGM, Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures and Disney adopted the process. In 1956 Fox engaged Robert Lippert to establish a subsidiary company, Regal Pictures Associated Producers Incorporated to film B pictures in CinemaScope. Fox produced new musicals using the CinemaScope process including Carousel and The King and I. CinemaScope brought a brief upturn in attendance; that year Darryl Zanuck announced his resignation as head of production. Zanuck moved to Paris, setting up as an independent producer being in the United States for many years. Zanuck's successor, producer Buddy Adler, died a year later. President Spyros Skouras brought in a series of production executives, but none had Zanuck's success. By the early 1960s, Fox was in trouble. A new version of Cleopatra had begun in 1959 with Joan Collins in the
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of working-class life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Bart and Maggie; the show is set in the fictional town of Springfield and parodies American culture and society and the human condition. The family was conceived by Groening shortly before a solicitation for a series of animated shorts with producer James L. Brooks. Groening created a dysfunctional family and named the characters after his own family members, substituting Bart for his own name; the shorts became a part of The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987. After three seasons, the sketch was developed into a half-hour prime time show and became Fox's first series to land in the Top 30 ratings in a season. Since its debut on December 17, 1989, 659 episodes of The Simpsons have been broadcast, it is the longest-running American sitcom, the longest-running American scripted primetime television series in terms of seasons and number of episodes.
The Simpsons Movie, a feature-length film, was released in theaters worldwide on July 27, 2007, grossed over $527 million. On October 30, 2007, a video game was released; the Simpsons is on its thirtieth season, which began airing September 30, 2018. The Simpsons was renewed for a thirty-first and thirty-second season on February 6, 2019, in which the latter will contain the 700th episode; the Simpsons received acclaim throughout its first nine or ten seasons, which are considered its "Golden Age". Time named it the 20th century's best television series, Erik Adams of The A. V. Club named it "television's crowning achievement regardless of format". On January 14, 2000, the Simpson family was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, it has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 31 Primetime Emmy Awards, 30 Annie Awards, a Peabody Award. Homer's exclamatory catchphrase "D'oh!" has been adopted into the English language, while The Simpsons has influenced many other adult-oriented animated sitcoms.
However, it has been criticized for a perceived decline in quality over the years. The Simpsons is known for its wide ensemble of supporting characters; the main characters are the Simpson family, who live in a fictional "Middle America" town of Springfield. Homer, the father, works as a safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, a position at odds with his careless, buffoonish personality, he is married to a stereotypical American housewife and mother. They have three children: a ten-year-old troublemaker and prankster. Although the family is dysfunctional, many episodes examine their relationships and bonds with each other and they are shown to care about one another. Homer's dad Grampa Simpson lives in the Springfield Retirement Home after Homer forced his dad to sell his house so that his family could buy theirs. Grampa Simpson has had starring roles in several episodes; the family owns a dog, Santa's Little Helper, a cat, Snowball V, renamed Snowball II in "I, -Bot". Both pets have had starring roles in several episodes.
The show includes an array of quirky supporting characters, which include Homer's co-workers Lenny Leonard and Carl Carlson, the school principal Seymour Skinner and teachers Edna Krabappel and Elizabeth Hoover, neighbor Ned Flanders, friends Barney Gumble, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Moe Szyslak, Milhouse Van Houten, Nelson Muntz, extended relatives Patty and Selma Bouvier, townspeople such as Mayor Quimby, Chief Clancy Wiggum, tycoon Charles Montgomery Burns and his executive assistant Waylon Smithers, local celebrities Krusty the Clown and news reporter Kent Brockman. The creators intended many of these characters as one-time jokes or for fulfilling needed functions in the town. A number of them subsequently starred in their own episodes. According to Matt Groening, the show adopted the concept of a large supporting cast from the comedy show SCTV. Despite the depiction of yearly milestones such as holidays or birthdays passing, the characters do not age between episodes, appear just as they did when the series began.
The series uses a floating timeline in which episodes take place in the year the episode is produced though the characters do not age. Flashbacks and flashforwards do depict the characters at other points in their lives, with the timeline of these depictions generally floating relative to the year the episode is produced. For example, in the 1991 episode "I Married Marge", Bart appears to be born in 1980 or 1981, but in the 1995 episode "And Maggie Makes Three", Maggie appears to be born in 1993 or 1994. A canon of the show does exist, although Treehouse of Horror episodes and any fictional story told within the series are non-canon. However, continuity is limited in The Simpsons. For example, Krusty the Clown may be able to read in one episode, but may not be able to read in another. Lessons learned by the family in one episode may be forgotten in the next; some examples of limited continuity include Sideshow Bob's appearances where Bart and Lisa flashback at all the crimes he committed in Springfield or when the characters try to remember things that happened in previous episodes.
The Simpsons takes place in the fictional American town of Springfield in an unknown and impossible-to-determine U. S. state. The show is intentionally e
IGN
IGN is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc. a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, itself wholly owned by j2 Global. The company is located in San Francisco's SOMA district and is headed by its former editor-in-chief, Peer Schneider; the IGN website was the brainchild of media entrepreneur Chris Anderson and launched on September 29, 1996. It focuses on games, television, comics and other media. A network of desktop websites, IGN is now distributed on mobile platforms, console programs on the Xbox and PlayStation, FireTV, via YouTube, Twitch and Snapchat. IGN was the flagship website of IGN Entertainment, a website which owned and operated several other websites oriented towards players' interests and entertainment, such as Rotten Tomatoes, GameSpy, GameStats, VE3D, TeamXbox, Vault Network, FilePlanet, AskMen, among others. IGN was sold to publishing company Ziff Davis in February 2013 and now operates as a j2 Global subsidiary. Created in September 1996 as the Imagine Games Network, the IGN content network was founded by publishing executive Jonathan Simpson-Bint and began as five individual websites within Imagine Media: N64.com, PSXPower, Next-Generation.com and Ultra Game Players Online.
Imagine expanded on its owned-and-operated websites by creating an affiliate network that included a number of independent fansites such as PSX Nation.com, Sega-Saturn.com, Game Sages, GameFAQs. In 1998, the network launched a new homepage that consolidated the individual sites as system channels under the IGN brand; the homepage exposed content from more than 30 different channels. Next-Generation and Ultra Game Players Online were not part of this consolidation. G. P. O. Dissolved with the cancellation of the magazine, Next-Generation was put "on hold" when Imagine decided to concentrate on launching the short-lived Daily Radar brand. In February 1999, PC Magazine named IGN one of the hundred-best websites, alongside competitors GameSpot and CNET Gamecenter; that same month, Imagine Media incorporated a spin-off that included IGN and its affiliate channels as Affiliation Networks, while Simpson-Bint remained at the former company. In September, the newly spun-out standalone internet media company, changed its name to Snowball.com.
At the same time, small entertainment website The Den merged into IGN and added non-gaming content to the growing network. Snowball shed most of its other properties during the dot-com bubble. IGN prevailed with growing audience numbers and a newly established subscription service called IGN Insider, which led to the shedding of the name "Snowball" and adoption of IGN Entertainment on May 10, 2002. In June 2005, IGN reported having 24,000,000 unique visitors per month, with 4.8 million registered users through all departments of the site. IGN is ranked among the top 200 most-visited websites according to Alexa. In September 2005, IGN was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's multi-media business empire, News Corporation, for $650 million. IGN celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 12, 2008. IGN was headquartered in the Marina Point Parkway office park in Brisbane, until it relocated to a smaller office building near AT&T Park in San Francisco on March 29, 2010. On May 25, 2011, IGN sold its Direct2Drive division to Gamefly for an undisclosed amount.
In 2011, IGN Entertainment acquired its rival UGO Entertainment from Hearst Corporation. News Corp. planned to spin off IGN Entertainment as a publicly traded company, continuing a string of divestitures for digital properties it had acquired. On February 4, 2013, after a failed attempt to spin off IGN as a separate company, News Corp. announced that it had sold IGN Entertainment to the publishing company Ziff Davis, acquired by J2 Global. Financial details regarding the purchase were not revealed. Prior to its acquisition by UGO, 1UP.com had been owned by Ziff Davis. Soon after the acquisition, IGN announced that it would be laying off staff and closing GameSpy, 1UP.com, UGO in order to focus on its flagship brands, IGN.com and AskMen. The role-playing video game interest website Vault Network was acquired by IGN in 1999. GameStats, a review aggregation website, was founded by IGN in 2004. GameStats includes a "GPM" rating system which incorporates an average press score and average gamer score, as well as the number of page hits for the game.
However, the site is no longer being updated. The Xbox interest site, TeamXbox, the PC game website VE3D were acquired in 2003. IGN Entertainment merged with GameSpy Industries in 2005; the merger brought the game download site FilePlanet into the IGN group. IGN Entertainment acquired the online male lifestyle magazine AskMen.com in 2005. In 2004, IGN acquired film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and in 2010, sold the website to Flixster. In October 2017, Humble Bundle announced that it was being acquired by IGN. A member of the IGN staff writes a review for a game and gives it a score between 0.1 and 10.0, assigned by increments of 0.1 and determines how much the game is recommended. The score is given according to the "individual aspects of a game, like presentation, sound and lasting appeal." Each game is given a score in each of these categories, but the overall score for the game is an independent evaluation, not an average of the scores in each category. On August 3, 2010, IGN announced.
Instead of a 100-point s
Modern architecture
Modern architecture, or modernist architecture was based upon new and innovative technologies of construction the use of glass and reinforced concrete. It emerged in the first half of the 20th century and became dominant after World War II until the 1980s, when it was replaced as the principal style for institutional and corporate buildings by postmodern architecture. Modern architecture emerged at the end of the 19th century from revolutions in technology and building materials, from a desire to break away from historical architectural styles and to invent something, purely functional and new; the revolution in materials came first, with the use of cast iron, plate glass, reinforced concrete, to build structures that were stronger and taller. The cast plate glass process was invented in 1848, allowing the manufacture of large windows; the Crystal Palace by Joseph Paxton at the Great Exhibition of 1851 was an early example of iron and plate glass construction, followed in 1864 by the first glass and metal curtain wall.
These developments together led to the first steel-framed skyscraper, the ten-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago, built in 1884 by William Le Baron Jenney. The iron frame construction of the Eiffel Tower the tallest structure in the world, captured the imagination of millions of visitors to the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition. French industrialist François Coignet was the first to use iron-reinforced concrete, that is, concrete strengthened with iron bars, as a technique for constructing buildings. In 1853 Coignet built the first iron reinforced concrete structure, a four-story house in the suburbs of Paris. A further important step forward was the invention of the safety elevator by Elisha Otis, first demonstrated at the Crystal Palace exposition in 1852, which made tall office and apartment buildings practical. Another important technology for the new architecture was electric light, which reduced the inherent danger of fires caused by gas in the 19th century; the debut of new materials and techniques inspired architects to break away from the neoclassical and eclectic models that dominated European and American architecture in the late 19th century, most notably eclecticism and Edwardian architecture, the Beaux-Arts architectural style.
This break with the past was urged by the architectural theorist and historian Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. In his 1872 book Entretiens sur L'Architecture, he urged: "use the means and knowledge given to us by our times, without the intervening traditions which are no longer viable today, in that way we can inaugurate a new architecture. For each function its material; this book influenced a generation of architects, including Louis Sullivan, Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, Antoni Gaudí. At the end of the 19th century, a few architects began to challenge the traditional Beaux Arts and Neoclassical styles that dominated architecture in Europe and the United States; the Glasgow School of Art designed by Charles Rennie MacIntosh, had a facade dominated by large vertical bays of windows. The Art Nouveau style was launched in the 1890s by Victor Horta in Belgium and Hector Guimard in France. In Barcelona, Antonio Gaudi conceived architecture as a form of sculpture. In 1903–1904 in Paris Auguste Perret and Henri Sauvage began to use reinforced concrete only used for industrial structures, to build apartment buildings.
Reinforced concrete, which could be molded into any shape, which could create enormous spaces without the need of supporting pillars, replaced stone and brick as the primary material for modernist architects. The first concrete apartment buildings by Perret and Sauvage were covered with ceramic tiles, but in 1905 Perret built the first concrete parking garage on 51 rue de Ponthieu in Paris. Henri Sauvage added another construction innovation in an apartment building on Rue Vavin in Paris. Between 1910 and 1913, Auguste Perret built the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, a masterpiece of reinforced concrete construction, with Art Deco sculptural bas-reliefs on the facade by Antoine Bourdelle; because of the concrete construction, no columns blocked the spectator's view of the stage. Otto Wagner, in Vienna, was another pioneer of the new style. In his book Moderne Architektur he had called for a more rationalist style of architecture, based on "modern life", he designed a stylized ornamental metro station at Karlsplatz in Vienna an ornamental Art Nouveau residence, Majolika House, before moving to a much more geometric and simplified style, without ornament, in the Austrian Postal Savings Bank.
Wagner declared his intention to express the function of the building in its exterior. The reinforced concrete exterior was covered with plaques of marble attached with bolts of polished aluminum; the interior was purely functional and spare, a large open space of steel and concrete where the only decoration was the structure itself. The Viennese architect Adolf Loos began removing any ornament from his buildings, his S
