title: Sea of Japan

text: The sea currents circulate in the counterclockwise direction. The Kuroshio (Japan Current), the Tsushima Current and the East Korea Warm Current bring warmer and more saline water to the north. There they merge into the Tsugaru Current and flow into the Pacific Ocean through the Tsugaru Strait. They also feed the Sōya Current and exit through the La Perouse Strait to the Sea of Okhotsk. The returning branch is composed of the Liman, North Korea and Central (or Mid-) Japan Sea currents which bring fresh and cold water along the Asian coast to the south.


title: Sea of Japan

text: Water temperature is mostly affected by exchange with the atmosphere in the northern part of the sea and by the currents in the southern part. Winter temperatures are or below in the north and in the south. In this season, there is a significant temperature difference between the western and eastern parts owing to the circular currents. So at the latitude of Peter the Great Gulf, the water temperature is about in the west and in the east. This east-west difference drops to in summer, and the temperatures rise to in the north and in the south.


title: Sea of Japan

text: As a result of the enclosed nature of the sea, its waters form clearly separated layers which may show seasonal and spatial dependence. In winter, the temperature is almost constant with the depth in the northern part of the sea. However, in central-southern parts, it may be down to , at , at and then remain at about until the bottom. Heating by the sun and tropical monsoons increases the depth gradient in spring–summer.


title: Sea of Japan

text: In the north the surface layer (down to ) may heat up to . The temperature would sharply drop to at , then slowly decrease to at and remain so down to the seabed. On the contrary, the temperature in the south could gradually decrease to at , then to at and to at , but then it would rise to about near the bottom. This cold layer at about is formed by sinking of cold water in the northern part of the sea in winter and is brought south by the sea currents; it is rather stable and is observed all through the year.


title: Sea of Japan

text: The hydrological isolation of the Sea of Japan also results in slightly lower average water salinity (34.09‰, where ‰ means parts per thousand) compared with the Pacific Ocean. In winter, the highest salinity at 34.5‰ is observed in the south where evaporation dominates over precipitation. It is the lowest at 33.8‰ in the south-east and south-west because of frequent rains and remains at about 34.09‰ in most other parts.


title: Sea of Japan

text: Thawing of ice in spring reduces water salinity in the north, but it remains high at 34.60–34.70‰ in the south, partly because of the inflow of salty water through the Korea Strait. A typical variation of salinity across the sea in summer is 31.5‰ to 34.5‰ from north to south. The depth distribution of salinity is relatively constant. The surface layer tends to be more fresh in the sea parts which experience ice melting and rains. The average water density is 1.0270 g/cm in the north and 1.0255 g/cm in the south in winter. It lowers in summer to 1.0253 and 1.0215 g/cm, respectively.


title: Sea of Japan

text: Few rivers flow into the Sea of Japan from mainland Asia, the largest being Tumen, Rudnaya, Samarga, Partizanskaya and Tumnin; all of them have mountainous character. In contrast, numerous large rivers flow from Honshū and Hokkaidō into the sea, including Japan's four largest rivers in the Shinano, Ishikari, Agano and Mogami. The total annual river discharge into the sea is and is relatively constant through the year, except for a minor increase in July. Most water (97% or ) flows into the sea through the Korea Strait and discharges through the Tsugaru (64% or , La Pérouse ) and Korea straits. Rainfall, evaporation and riverine inflow make only 1% of the water balance. Between October and April, the outflow exceeds the inflow due to the lower income through the Korea Strait; this balance reverses between May and September.


title: Sea of Japan

text: The sea has complex tides, which are induced by the tidal wave of the Pacific Ocean penetrating through the Korea Strait and Tsugaru strait. The tides are semi-diurnal (rise twice a day) in the Korea Strait and in the northern part of the Strait of Tartary. They are diurnal at the eastern shore of Korea, Russian Far East and the Japanese islands of Honshū and Hokkaidō. Mixed tides occur in Peter the Great Gulf and Korea strait. The tidal waves have a speed of in the open sea. They accelerate in the Korea Strait (), La Pérouse Strait () and especially in the Tsugaru Strait ().


title: Sea of Japan

text: The amplitude of the tides is relatively low and strongly varies across the sea. It reaches 3 meters in the south near the Korea Strait, but quickly drops northwards to at the southern tip of Korean Peninsula and to meters at the North Korean shores. Similar low tides are observed in Hokkaidō, Honshū and south Sakhalin. The amplitude however increases to toward the north of the Strait of Tartary due to its funnel-like shape. Apart from tides, the water level also experiences seasonal, monsoon-related variations across the entire sea with the highest levels observed in summer and lowest in winter. Wind may also locally change the water level by ; for example, it is higher in summer at the Korean and lower at the Japanese coasts.


title: Sea of Japan

text: The sea waters have blue to green-blue color and a transparency of about . They are rich in dissolved oxygen, especially in the western and northern parts, which are colder and have more phytoplankton than the eastern and southern areas. The oxygen concentration is 95% of the saturation point near the surface, it decreases with the depth to about 70% at .


title: Sea of Japan

text: The high concentration of dissolved oxygen results in the rich aquatic life of the Sea of Japan – there are more than 800 species of aquatic plants and more than 3,500 animal species, including more than 900 species of crustaceans, about 1,000 of fish and 26 of mammals. The coastal areas contain several kg/m of biomass. Pelagic (oceanic) fishes include saury, mackerel, Jack mackerels, sardines, anchovies, herring, sea bream, squid and various species of salmon and trout. The demersal (sea-bottom) fishes include cod, pollock and Atka mackerel.


title: Sea of Japan

text: Mammals are represented by seals and whales (ancient name for the basin in Chinese was "Sea of Whales"), and the crustaceans by shrimps and crabs. Because of the shallow straits connecting the sea with Pacific Ocean, the Sea of Japan has no characteristic oceanic deep-water fauna. Flora and fauna unique to the region near the Sea of Japan are known as "Japan Sea elements".


title: Sea of Japan

text: Fishery had long been the main economic activity on the Sea of Japan. It is mainly carried out on and near the continental shelves and focuses on herring, sardines and bluefin tuna. These species are however depleted from after World War II. Squid is mostly caught near the sea center and salmon near the northern and south-western shores. There is also a well-developed seaweed production.


title: Sea of Japan

text: The importance of the fishery in the sea is illustrated by the territorial disputes between Japan and South Korea over Liancourt Rocks and between Japan and Russia over the Kuril Islands. It is also reflected in various legends, such as the legend of the Heishi rock, which says that once when herring vanished, an old fairy threw a bottle with magic water into the sea, and the herring returned. The bottle got stuck to the seabed and turned into a rock, which became a representation of the God of the Sea of Japan.


title: Sea of Japan

text: Vladivostok is a base for the Russian whaling fleet. Although it operates in the northern seas, its production is processed and partly distributed in the Vladivostok area. Vladivostok is also a terminal point of the Trans-Siberian Railway which brings many goods to and from this major port. There is a regular ferry service across the Strait of Tartary between the Russian continental port of Vanino and Kholmsk in Sakhalin.


title: Sea of Japan

text: The sea has magnetite sands as well as natural gas and petroleum fields near the northern part of Japan and Sakhalin Island. The intensity of shipments across the sea is moderate, owing to the cold relations between many bordering countries. As a result, the largest Japanese ports are on the Pacific coast, and the significant ports on the Sea of Japan are Niigata, Tsuruta and Maizuru. Major South Korean ports are Busan, Ulsan, and Pohang situated on the south-eastern coast of the Korean Peninsula, but they also mainly target countries not bordering the Sea of Japan.


title: Sea of Japan

text: The major Russian port of Vladivostok mainly serves inland cargos, whereas Nakhodka and Vostochny are more international and have a busy exchange with Japan and South Korea. Other prominent Russian ports are Sovetskaya Gavan, Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky and Kholmsk, and the major ports of North Korea are Wonsan, Hamhung and Chongjin. The intensity of shipments across the Sea of Japan is steadily increasing as a result of the growth of East Asian economies.


title: March on Rome

text: The March on Rome () was an organized mass demonstration and a coup d'état in October 1922 which resulted in Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party (PNF) ascending to power in the Kingdom of Italy. In late October 1922, Fascist Party leaders planned an insurrection to take place by marching on the capital. On 28 October, the fascist demonstrators and Blackshirt paramilitaries approached Rome; Prime Minister Luigi Facta wished to declare a state of siege, but this was overruled by King Victor Emmanuel III, who, fearing bloodshed, persuaded Facta to resign by threatening to abdicate. On 30 October 1922, the King appointed Mussolini as Prime Minister, thereby transferring political power to the fascists without armed conflict. On 31 October the fascist blackshirts paraded in Rome, while Mussolini formed his coalition government.


title: March on Rome

text: In March 1919, Benito Mussolini founded the first Italian Fasces of Combat (FIC) at the beginning of the so-called Red Biennium, a two-year long social conflict between the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and the liberal and conservative ruling class. Mussolini suffered a defeat in the election of November 1919.


title: March on Rome

text: During the "two red years", there were numerous strikes, protests against rises in the cost of living, occupations of factories and land by industrial workers or agricultural laborers, and other types of clashes between socialists on one side and landowners and business owners on the other side. The government tried to play the role of neutral mediator, which dissatisfied both sides. Local elites felt themselves vulnerable and began to establish an alliance with the small Fascist movement, which contained many veterans of World War I and had a reputation for violence, in the hope of using Fascist paramilitary squads to destroy socialist organizations.


title: March on Rome

text: Since 1919, Fascist militias, known as "squadristi" or "Blackshirts" due to their uniforms, had been attacking socialist politicians and militants. In August 1920, the Blackshirt militia was used to break the general strike which started at the Alfa Romeo factory in Milan, while in November 1920, after the assassination of Giulio Giordani (a right-wing municipal councillor in Bologna), the Blackshirts were active in the suppression of the socialist movement, which included a strong anarcho-syndicalist component, especially in the Po Valley.


title: March on Rome

text: Local elections in 1920 were won by the socialists in many towns, cities and villages across Italy, and in response Fascist militias attacked union organizers and municipal administrators, making it difficult for local governments to function. A local deputy from the town of Budrio sent a telegram to the prime minister in October 1921 to report that the Fascists had effectively taken over, that "unions and socialist clubs [were] ordered to dissolve themselves within 48 hours or face physical destruction" and that the "life of the town is paralysed, authorities impotent". Similar situations also occurred in other towns across Northern and Central Italy from 1920 to 1922. The police repeatedly failed to intervene against Fascist violence, and in some cases police officers openly supported the Fascists and supplied them with weapons.


title: March on Rome

text: In the 1921 general election the Fascists ran within the National Blocs of Giovanni Giolitti, an anti-socialist coalition of liberals, conservatives and fascists. The Fascists won 35 seats and Mussolini was elected in the Parliament for the first time.


title: March on Rome

text: After a few weeks, Mussolini withdrew his support for Giolitti and his Italian Liberal Party (PLI) and attempted to work out a temporary truce with the Socialists by signing the so-called "Pact of Pacification" in the summer 1921. The Pact led to many protests by the radical members of the Fascist movement, led by local leaders like Roberto Farinacci, who were known as "Ras". In July 1921, Giolitti attempted to dissolve the Blackshirts, but he failed; while the Pact with the Socialists was nullified during the Third Fascist Congress on 7–10 November 1921, during which Mussolini promoted a nationalist program and renamed his movement National Fascist Party (PNF), which enrolled 320,000 members by late 1921.


title: March on Rome

text: In August 1922, an anti-fascist general strike was organized throughout the country by the socialists. Mussolini declared that the Fascists would suppress the strike themselves if the government did not immediately intervene to stop it, which enabled him to position the Fascist Party as a defender of law and order. On August 2, at Ancona, Fascist squads moved in from the countryside and razed all buildings occupied by socialists. This was then repeated in Genoa and other cities.


title: March on Rome

text: In Milan, on August 3 and 4, there was street fighting between socialists and fascists; the fascists destroyed the printing presses of the socialist newspaper "Avanti!" and burned its buildings. Then, with the support of local business owners, they took over local government and expelled the elected socialist administration from the town hall.


title: March on Rome

text: The Italian national government in Rome did nothing to react to these developments, and its inaction prompted Mussolini to begin planning a march on Rome. From their new power base in Milan, the Fascists gathered the financial support of large companies who were determined to fight against "strikes, bolshevism and nationalization". A delegation from the General Confederation of Italian Industry met with Mussolini two days before the March on Rome. Also a few days before the march, Mussolini consulted with the U.S. Ambassador Richard Washburn Child about whether the U.S. government would object to Fascist participation in a future Italian government and Child gave him American support. When Mussolini learned that Prime Minister Luigi Facta had given Gabriele D'Annunzio the mission to organize a large demonstration on 4 November 1922 to celebrate the national victory during the war, he decided to immediately implement the March.


title: March on Rome

text: On 24 October 1922, Mussolini declared in front of 60,000 militants at a Fascist rally in Naples: "Our program is simple: we want to rule Italy." On the following day, the "Quadrumvirs", Emilio De Bono, Italo Balbo, Michele Bianchi and Cesare Maria de Vecchi, were appointed by Mussolini at the head of the march, while he went to Milan. He did not participate in the march, though he allowed pictures to be taken of him marching along with the Fascist marchers, and he went to Rome the next day. Generals Gustavo Fara and Sante Ceccherini assisted with the preparations of the March of 18 October. Other organizers of the march included the Marquis Dino Perrone Compagni and Ulisse Igliori.


title: March on Rome

text: On 26 October, the former Prime Minister Antonio Salandra warned the then Prime Minister, Luigi Facta, that Mussolini was demanding his resignation and that he was preparing to march on Rome. However, Facta did not believe Salandra and thought that Mussolini would only become a minister of his government. To meet the threat posed by the bands of fascist troops now gathering outside Rome, Luigi Facta (who had resigned but continued to hold power) ordered a state of siege for Rome. Having had previous conversations with the King about the repression of fascist violence, he was sure the King would agree. However, King Victor Emmanuel III refused to sign the military order.


title: March on Rome

text: On the morning of October 28, in Milan, Mussolini received a delegation of supportive industrialists at the "Il Popolo d'Italia" headquarters who urgently requested him to find a compromise with Antonio Salandra. Mussolini was then proposed to rule alongside Salandra, however he refused.


title: March on Rome

text: On 29 October, the King handed power to Mussolini, who was supported by the military, the business class, and the right wing.


title: March on Rome

text: The march itself was composed of fewer than 30,000 men, but the King in part feared a civil war since the "squadristi" had already taken control of the Po plain and most of the country, while Fascism was no longer seen as a threat to the establishment. Mussolini was asked to form his cabinet on 29 October 1922, while some 25,000 Blackshirts were parading in Rome. Mussolini thus legally reached power, in accordance with the Statuto Albertino, the Italian Constitution. The March on Rome was not the seizure of power which Fascism later celebrated but rather the precipitating force behind a transfer of power within the framework of the constitution. This transition was made possible by the surrender of public authorities in the face of fascist intimidation. Many business and financial leaders believed it would be possible to manipulate Mussolini, whose early speeches and policies emphasized free market and laissez faire economics. This proved overly optimistic, as the Great Depression struck Italy along with the rest of the world in 1929, and Mussolini responded to it by increasing the role of the state in the economy to avoid a banking crisis. By 1934, the "Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale" (Institute for Industrial Reconstruction) had been created to rescue, restructure and finance banks and private companies that went bankrupt during the Great Depression, and by 1937 this Institute had become a major shareholder in Italian industry, controlling all the capital of the military steel sector, 40% of nonmilitary steel, and 30% of the electrical industry.


title: March on Rome

text: Back in 1922, in the aftermath of the March on Rome, Mussolini pretended to be willing to take a junior ministry in a Giolitti or Salandra cabinet, but then demanded the presidency of the Council of Ministers. Fearing a conflict with the fascists, the ruling class thus handed power to Mussolini, who went on to install the dictatorship after the 10 June 1924 assassination of Giacomo Matteotti – who had finished writing "The Fascisti Exposed: A Year of Fascist Domination" – executed by Amerigo Dumini, accused of being the leader of the "Italian Ceka", though there is no evidence for such an organization existing.


title: Software bug

text: A software bug is an error, flaw or fault in the design, development, or operation of computer software that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways. The process of finding and correcting bugs is termed "debugging" and often uses formal techniques or tools to pinpoint bugs. Since the 1950s, some computer systems have been designed to deter, detect or auto-correct various computer bugs during operations.


title: Software bug

text: Bugs in software can arise from mistakes and errors made in interpreting and extracting users' requirements, planning a program's design, writing its source code, and from interaction with humans, hardware and programs, such as operating systems or libraries. A program with many, or serious, bugs is often described as "buggy". Bugs can trigger errors that may have ripple effects. The effects of bugs may be subtle, such as unintended text formatting, through to more obvious effects such as causing a program to crash, freezing the computer, or causing damage to hardware. Other bugs qualify as security bugs and might, for example, enable a malicious user to bypass access controls in order to obtain unauthorized privileges.


title: Software bug

text: Some software bugs have been linked to disasters. Bugs in code that controlled the Therac-25 radiation therapy machine were directly responsible for patient deaths in the 1980s. In 1996, the European Space Agency's US$1 billion prototype Ariane 5 rocket was destroyed less than a minute after launch due to a bug in the on-board guidance computer program. In 1994, an RAF Chinook helicopter crashed, killing 29; this was initially blamed on pilot error, but was later thought to have been caused by a software bug in the engine-control computer. Buggy software caused the early 21st century British Post Office scandal, the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history.


title: Software bug

text: In 2002, a study commissioned by the US Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that "software bugs, or errors, are so prevalent and so detrimental that they cost the US economy an estimated $59 billion annually, or about 0.6 percent of the gross domestic product".


title: Software bug

text: The Middle English word "bugge" is the basis for the terms "bugbear" and "bugaboo" as terms used for a monster.


title: Software bug

text: The term "bug" to describe defects has been a part of engineering jargon since the 1870s and predates electronics and computers; it may have originally been used in hardware engineering to describe mechanical malfunctions. For instance, Thomas Edison wrote in a letter to an associate in 1878:


title: Software bug

text: Baffle Ball, the first mechanical pinball game, was advertised as being "free of bugs" in 1931. Problems with military gear during World War II were referred to as bugs (or glitches). In a book published in 1942, Louise Dickinson Rich, speaking of a powered ice cutting machine, said, "Ice sawing was suspended until the creator could be brought in to take the bugs out of his darling."


title: Software bug

text: Isaac Asimov used the term "bug" to relate to issues with a robot in his short story "Catch That Rabbit", published in 1944.


title: Software bug

text: The term "bug" was used in an account by computer pioneer Grace Hopper, who publicized the cause of a malfunction in an early electromechanical computer. A typical version of the story is:


title: Software bug

text: Hopper was not present when the bug was found, but it became one of her favorite stories. The date in the log book was September 9, 1947. The operators who found it, including William "Bill" Burke, later of the Naval Weapons Laboratory, Dahlgren, Virginia, were familiar with the engineering term and amusedly kept the insect with the notation "First actual case of bug being found." This log book, complete with attached moth, is part of the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.


title: Software bug

text: The related term "debug" also appears to predate its usage in computing: the "Oxford English Dictionary"s etymology of the word contains an attestation from 1945, in the context of aircraft engines.


title: Software bug

text: The concept that software might contain errors dates back to Ada Lovelace's 1843 notes on the analytical engine, in which she speaks of the possibility of program "cards" for Charles Babbage's analytical engine being erroneous:


title: Software bug

text: The Open Technology Institute, run by the group, New America, released a report "Bugs in the System" in August 2016 stating that U.S. policymakers should make reforms to help researchers identify and address software bugs. The report "highlights the need for reform in the field of software vulnerability discovery and disclosure." One of the report's authors said that Congress has not done enough to address cyber software vulnerability, even though Congress has passed a number of bills to combat the larger issue of cyber security.


title: Software bug

text: Government researchers, companies, and cyber security experts are the people who typically discover software flaws. The report calls for reforming computer crime and copyright laws.


title: Software bug

text: While the use of the term "bug" to describe software errors is common, many have suggested that it should be abandoned. One argument is that the word "bug" is divorced from a sense that a human being caused the problem, and instead implies that the defect arose on its own, leading to a push to abandon the term "bug" in favor of terms such as "defect", with limited success. Since the 1970s Gary Kildall somewhat humorously suggested to use the term "blunder".


title: Software bug

text: In software engineering, "mistake metamorphism" (from Greek "meta" = "change", "morph" = "form") refers to the evolution of a defect in the final stage of software deployment. Transformation of a "mistake" committed by an analyst in the early stages of the software development lifecycle, which leads to a "defect" in the final stage of the cycle has been called 'mistake metamorphism'.


title: Software bug

text: Different stages of a "mistake" in the entire cycle may be described as "mistakes", "anomalies", "faults", "failures", "errors", "exceptions", "crashes", "glitches", "bugs", "defects", "incidents", or "side effects".


title: Software bug

text: Bugs usually appear when the programmer makes a logic error. Various innovations in programming style and defensive programming are designed to make these bugs less likely, or easier to spot. Some typos, especially of symbols or logical/mathematical operators, allow the program to operate incorrectly, while others such as a missing symbol or misspelled name may prevent the program from operating. Compiled languages can reveal some typos when the source code is compiled.


title: Software bug

text: Several schemes assist managing programmer activity so that fewer bugs are produced. Software engineering (which addresses software design issues as well) applies many techniques to prevent defects. For example, formal program specifications state the exact behavior of programs so that design bugs may be eliminated. Unfortunately, formal specifications are impractical for anything but the shortest programs, because of problems of combinatorial explosion and indeterminacy.


title: Software bug

text: In test-driven development unit tests are written before the code and the code is not considered complete until all tests complete successfully.


title: Software bug

text: Agile software development involves frequent software releases with relatively small changes. Defects are revealed by user feedback.


title: Software bug

text: Open source development allows anyone to examine source code. A school of thought popularized by Eric S. Raymond as Linus's law says that popular open-source software has more chance of having few or no bugs than other software, because "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". This assertion has been disputed, however: computer security specialist Elias Levy wrote that "it is easy to hide vulnerabilities in complex, little understood and undocumented source code," because, "even if people are reviewing the code, that doesn't mean they're qualified to do so." An example of an open-source software bug was the 2008 OpenSSL vulnerability in Debian.


title: Software bug

text: Programming languages include features to help prevent bugs, such as static type systems, restricted namespaces and modular programming. For example, when a programmer writes (pseudocode) codice_1, although this may be syntactically correct, the code fails a type check. Compiled languages catch this without having to run the program. Interpreted languages catch such errors at runtime. Some languages deliberately exclude features that easily lead to bugs, at the expense of slower performance: the general principle being that, it is almost always better to write simpler, slower code than inscrutable code that runs slightly faster, especially considering that maintenance cost is substantial. For example, the Java programming language does not support pointer arithmetic; implementations of some languages such as Pascal and scripting languages often have runtime bounds checking of arrays, at least in a debugging build.


title: Software bug

text: Tools for code analysis help developers by inspecting the program text beyond the compiler's capabilities to spot potential problems. Although in general the problem of finding all programming errors given a specification is not solvable (see halting problem), these tools exploit the fact that human programmers tend to make certain kinds of simple mistakes often when writing software.


title: Software bug

text: Tools to monitor the performance of the software as it is running, either specifically to find problems such as bottlenecks or to give assurance as to correct working, may be embedded in the code explicitly (perhaps as simple as a statement saying codice_2), or provided as tools. It is often a surprise to find where most of the time is taken by a piece of code, and this removal of assumptions might cause the code to be rewritten.


title: Software bug

text: Software testers are people whose primary task is to find bugs, or write code to support testing. On some projects, more resources may be spent on testing than in developing the program.


title: Software bug

text: Measurements during testing can provide an estimate of the number of likely bugs remaining; this becomes more reliable the longer a product is tested and developed.


title: Software bug

text: Finding and fixing bugs, or "debugging", is a major part of computer programming. Maurice Wilkes, an early computing pioneer, described his realization in the late 1940s that much of the rest of his life would be spent finding mistakes in his own programs.


title: Software bug

text: Usually, the most difficult part of debugging is finding the bug. Once it is found, correcting it is usually relatively easy. Programs known as debuggers help programmers locate bugs by executing code line by line, watching variable values, and other features to observe program behavior. Without a debugger, code may be added so that messages or values may be written to a console or to a window or log file to trace program execution or show values.


title: Software bug

text: However, even with the aid of a debugger, locating bugs is something of an art. It is not uncommon for a bug in one section of a program to cause failures in a completely different section, thus making it especially difficult to track (for example, an error in a graphics rendering routine causing a file I/O routine to fail), in an apparently unrelated part of the system.


title: Software bug

text: Sometimes, a bug is not an isolated flaw, but represents an error of thinking or planning on the part of the programmer. Such "logic errors" require a section of the program to be overhauled or rewritten. As a part of code review, stepping through the code and imagining or transcribing the execution process may often find errors without ever reproducing the bug as such.


title: Software bug

text: More typically, the first step in locating a bug is to reproduce it reliably. Once the bug is reproducible, the programmer may use a debugger or other tool while reproducing the error to find the point at which the program went astray.


title: Software bug

text: Some bugs are revealed by inputs that may be difficult for the programmer to re-create. One cause of the Therac-25 radiation machine deaths was a bug (specifically, a race condition) that occurred only when the machine operator very rapidly entered a treatment plan; it took days of practice to become able to do this, so the bug did not manifest in testing or when the manufacturer attempted to duplicate it. Other bugs may stop occurring whenever the setup is augmented to help find the bug, such as running the program with a debugger; these are called "heisenbugs" (humorously named after the Heisenberg uncertainty principle).


title: Software bug

text: Since the 1990s, particularly following the Ariane 5 Flight 501 disaster, interest in automated aids to debugging rose, such as static code analysis by abstract interpretation.


title: Software bug

text: Some classes of bugs have nothing to do with the code. Faulty documentation or hardware may lead to problems in system use, even though the code matches the documentation. In some cases, changes to the code eliminate the problem even though the code then no longer matches the documentation. Embedded systems frequently work around hardware bugs, since to make a new version of a ROM is much cheaper than remanufacturing the hardware, especially if they are commodity items.


title: Software bug

text: To facilitate reproducible research on testing and debugging, researchers use curated benchmarks of bugs:


title: Software bug

text: Bug management includes the process of documenting, categorizing, assigning, reproducing, correcting and releasing the corrected code. Proposed changes to software – bugs as well as enhancement requests and even entire releases – are commonly tracked and managed using bug tracking systems or issue tracking systems. The items added may be called defects, tickets, issues, or, following the agile development paradigm, stories and epics. Categories may be objective, subjective or a combination, such as version number, area of the software, severity and priority, as well as what type of issue it is, such as a feature request or a bug.


title: Software bug

text: A bug triage reviews bugs and decides whether and when to fix them. The decision is based on the bug's priority, and factors such as project schedules. The triage is not meant to investigate the cause of bugs, but rather the cost of fixing them. The triage happens regularly, and goes through bugs opened or reopened since the previous meeting. The attendees of the triage process typically are the project manager, development manager, test manager, build manager, and technical experts.


title: Software bug

text: "Severity" is the intensity of the impact the bug has on system operation. This impact may be data loss, financial, loss of goodwill and wasted effort. Severity levels are not standardized. Impacts differ across industry. A crash in a video game has a totally different impact than a crash in a web browser, or real time monitoring system. For example, bug severity levels might be "crash or hang", "no workaround" (meaning there is no way the customer can accomplish a given task), "has workaround" (meaning the user can still accomplish the task), "visual defect" (for example, a missing image or displaced button or form element), or "documentation error". Some software publishers use more qualified severities such as "critical", "high", "low", "blocker" or "trivial". The severity of a bug may be a separate category to its priority for fixing, and the two may be quantified and managed separately.


title: Software bug

text: "Priority" controls where a bug falls on the list of planned changes. The priority is decided by each software producer. Priorities may be numerical, such as 1 through 5, or named, such as "critical," "high," "low," or "deferred." These rating scales may be similar or even identical to "severity" ratings, but are evaluated as a combination of the bug's severity with its estimated effort to fix; a bug with low severity but easy to fix may get a higher priority than a bug with moderate severity that requires excessive effort to fix. Priority ratings may be aligned with product releases, such as "critical" priority indicating all the bugs that must be fixed before the next software release.


title: Software bug

text: A bug severe enough to delay or halt the release of the product is called a "show stopper" or "showstopper bug". It is named so because it "stops the show" – causes unacceptable product failure.


title: Software bug

text: It is common practice to release software with known, low-priority bugs. Bugs of sufficiently high priority may warrant a special release of part of the code containing only modules with those fixes. These are known as "patches". Most releases include a mixture of behavior changes and multiple bug fixes. Releases that emphasize bug fixes are known as "maintenance" releases, to differentiate it from major releases that emphasize feature additions or changes.


title: Software bug

text: In software development projects, a mistake or error may be introduced at any stage. Bugs arise from oversight or misunderstanding by a software team during specification, design, coding, configuration, data entry or documentation. For example, a relatively simple program to alphabetize a list of words, the design might fail to consider what should happen when a word contains a hyphen. Or when converting an abstract design into code, the coder might inadvertently create an off-by-one error which can be a "<" where "<=" was intended, and fail to sort the last word in a list.


title: Software bug

text: Another category of bug is called a "race condition" that may occur when programs have multiple components executing at the same time. If the components interact in a different order than the developer intended, they could interfere with each other and stop the program from completing its tasks. These bugs may be difficult to detect or anticipate, since they may not occur during every execution of a program.


title: Software bug

text: Conceptual errors are a developer's misunderstanding of what the software must do. The resulting software may perform according to the developer's understanding, but not what is really needed. Other types:


title: Software bug

text: In operations on numerical values, problems can arise that result in unexpected output, slowing of a process, or crashing. These can be from a lack of awareness of the qualities of the data storage such as a loss of precision due to rounding, numerically unstable algorithms, arithmetic overflow and underflow, or from lack of awareness of how calculations are handled by different software coding languages such as division by zero which in some languages may throw an exception, and in others may return a special value such as NaN or infinity.


title: Software bug

text: Control flow bugs are those found in processes with valid logic, but that lead to unintended results, such as infinite loops and infinite recursion, incorrect comparisons for conditional statements such as using the incorrect comparison operator, and off-by-one errors (counting one too many or one too few iterations when looping).


title: Software bug

text: The amount and type of damage a software bug may cause naturally affects decision-making, processes and policy regarding software quality. In applications such as human spaceflight, aviation, nuclear power, health care, public transport or automotive safety, since software flaws have the potential to cause human injury or even death, such software will have far more scrutiny and quality control than, for example, an online shopping website. In applications such as banking, where software flaws have the potential to cause serious financial damage to a bank or its customers, quality control is also more important than, say, a photo editing application.


title: Software bug

text: Other than the damage caused by bugs, some of their cost is due to the effort invested in fixing them. In 1978, Lientz et al. showed that the median of projects invest 17 percent of the development effort in bug fixing. In research in 2020 on GitHub repositories showed the median is 20%.


title: Software bug

text: In 1994, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center managed to reduce their average number of errors from 4.5 per 1000 lines of code (SLOC) down to 1 per 1000 SLOC.


title: Software bug

text: Another study in 1990 reported that exceptionally good software development processes can achieve deployment failure rates as low as 0.1 per 1000 SLOC. This figure is iterated in literature such as "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell, and the "NASA study on Flight Software Complexity". Some projects even attained zero defects: the firmware in the IBM Wheelwriter typewriter which consists of 63,000 SLOC, and the Space Shuttle software with 500,000 SLOC.


title: Software bug

text: A number of software bugs have become well-known, usually due to their severity: examples include various space and military aircraft crashes. Possibly the most famous bug is the Year 2000 problem or Y2K bug, which caused many programs written long before the transition from 19xx to 20xx dates to malfunction, for example treating a date such as "25 Dec 04" as being in 1904, displaying "19100" instead of "2000", and so on. A huge effort at the end of the 20th century resolved the most severe problems, and there were no major consequences.


title: Software bug

text: The 2012 stock trading disruption involved one such incompatibility between the old API and a new API.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: The European/South American Cup, more commonly known as the Intercontinental Cup and from 1980 to 2004 as the Toyota European/South American Cup (abbreviated as Toyota Cup) for sponsorship reasons, was an international football competition endorsed by UEFA (Europe) and CONMEBOL (South America), contested between representative clubs from these confederations (representatives of most developed continents in the football world), usually the winners of the UEFA Champions League and the South American Copa Libertadores. It ran from 1960 to 2004, when it was succeeded by the FIFA Club World Championship, although they both ran concurrently in 2000.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: From its formation in 1960 to 1979, the competition was as a two-legged tie, with a playoff if necessary until 1968, and penalty kicks later. During the 1970s, European participation in the Intercontinental Cup became a running question due to controversial events in the 1969 match, and some European Cup-winning teams withdrew. From 1980, the competition was rebranded and contested as a single match played in Japan, regarded neutral territory for both contestants, and sponsored by multinational automaker Toyota, which offered a secondary trophy, the Toyota Cup. At that point, the Japan Football Association was involved at a logistical level as host, though it continued to be endorsed by UEFA and CONMEBOL.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: The first winner of the cup was Spanish side Real Madrid, who beat Peñarol of Uruguay in 1960. The last winner was Portuguese side Porto, defeating Colombian side Once Caldas in a penalty shoot-out in 2004. The competition ended in 2004 and it merged with the FIFA Club World Championship in 2005.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: According to Brazilian newspaper "Tribuna de Imprensa" in 1958, the idea for the Intercontinental Cup rose in 1958 in a conversation between the then president of the Brazilian FA João Havelange and French journalist Jacques Goddet. The first mention of the creation of the Intercontinental and Libertadores Cups was published by Brazilian and Spanish newspapers on 9 October 1958, referring to Havelange's announcement of the project to create such competitions, which he uttered during a UEFA meeting he attended as an invitee. Prior to this announcement, the reigning European champions Real Madrid C.F. played just one intercontinental club competition, the 1957 Tournoi de Paris ("they played also the 1956 Pequeña Copa, but they scheduled their participation in it before becoming European champions"). According to a French video record of the highlights of the 1957 Tournoi final match, between Real Madrid C.F. and CR Vasco da Gama, this was the first match ever dubbed as "the best team of Europe vs. the best team of South America", as Madrid was the European champions and Vasco was the "Brazilian" (in fact, Rio de Janeiro) champions, having this match been held at Parc des Princes, then managed by the aforementioned Jacques Goddet, and for these reasons CR Vasco da Gama executives have claimed that the 1957 match and the 1958 FIFA World Cup Brazilian victory have influenced the Europeans on the importance of South American football, and thus the idea in 1958 for the creation of the Intercontinental Cup ("the Madrid team declined to participate in the 1958 Paris Tournoi for it was held just 5 days before the final of the 1957/1958 European Cup"). The Madrid-Vasco 1957 match was described as "being like a club world cup match" by the Brazilian press, as was a June 1959 friendly between Real Madrid and Torneio Rio – São Paulo champions Santos FC, which Real Madrid won 5–3.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: Created in 1960 at the initiative of the European confederation (UEFA), with CONMEBOL's support, the "European/South American Cup", known also as the Intercontinental Cup, was contested by the holders of the European Champion Clubs' Cup and the winners of its newly established South American equivalent, the Copa Libertadores. The competition was not endorsed by FIFA, and in 1961 FIFA refused to allow it to take place unless the participants gave it a "private friendly match" status. However, the competition went on regardless, with the endorsement of UEFA and CONMEBOL, both of whom include every edition of the competition in their records. It was the brainchild of UEFA president Henri Delaunay, who also helped Jules Rimet in the realisation of the inaugural FIFA World Cup in 1930. Initially played over two legs, with a third match if required in the early years (when goal difference did not count), the competition had a rather turbulent existence. The first winners of the competition were Spanish club Real Madrid. Real Madrid managed to hold Uruguayan side Peñarol 0–0 in Montevideo and trounce the South Americans 5–1 in Madrid to win.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: After Real Madrid's victory in the first Intercontinental Cup, Barcelona newspaper "El Mundo Deportivo" hailed the Madrid team as the first world champion club; although they pointed out that the competition "did not include Africans, Asians and other countries part to FIFA", they also expressed doubt that these regions presented football of the same quality as Europe and South America. The Spaniards titled themselves "world champions" until FIFA stepped in and objected; citing that the competition did not include any other champions from the other confederations, FIFA stated that they can only claim to be intercontinental champions of a competition played between two organisations. Peñarol would appear again the following year and come out victorious after beating Portuguese club Benfica on the playoff; after a 1–0 win by the Europeans in Lisboa and a 5–0 trashing by the South Americans, a playoff at the Estadio Centenario saw the home side squeeze a 2–1 win to become the first South American side to win the competition.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: In 1962 the tournament grew more in worldwide attention after it was swept through the sublime football of a Santos team led by Pelé, considered by some the best club team of all times. "Os Santásticos", also known as "O Balé Branco" (or white ballet), which dazzled the world during that time and containing stars such as Gilmar, Mauro, Mengálvio, Coutinho, and Pepe, won the title after defeating Benfica 3–2 in Rio de Janeiro and thrashing the Europeans 2–5 in their Estádio da Luz. Santos would successfully defend the title in 1963 after being pushed all the way by Milan. After each side won 4–2 at their respective home legs, a playoff match at the Maracanã saw Santos keep the title after a tight 1–0 victory. The competition attracted the interest of other continents. The North and Central America confederation, CONCACAF, was created, among other reasons, to attempt the participation of North-Central-American clubs in Copa Libertadores, and thus in the Intercontinental Cup. Milan's fierce rivals, Internazionale, would go on to win the 1964 and 1965 Intercontinental Cups, beating Argentine club Independiente on both occasions. Peñarol gained revenge for their loss in 1960 by crushing Real Madrid 4–0 in aggregate in 1966.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: However, as a result of the violence often practised in the Copa Libertadores by Argentine and Uruguayan clubs during the 1960s, disagreements with CONMEBOL, the lack of financial incentives and the violent, brutal and controversial way the Brazilian national team was treated in the 1966 FIFA World Cup by European teams, Brazilian football—including its club sides—declined to participate in international competitions in the late 1960s, including the Copa Libertadores and consequently the Intercontinental Cup. During this time, the competition became dogged by foul play. Calendar problems, acts of brutality, even on the pitch, and boycotts tarnished its image, to the point of bringing into question the wisdom of organising it at all.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: The 1967 games between Argentina's Racing Club and Scotland's Celtic were violent affairs, with the third decisive game being dubbed "The Battle of Montevideo" after three players from the Scottish side and two from the Argentine side were sent off. A fourth Celtic player was also dismissed near the end of the game, but amid the chaos he got away with staying on.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: The following season, Argentine side Estudiantes de La Plata faced England's Manchester United in which the return leg saw Estudiantes come out on top of a bad-tempered series. But it was the events of 1969 which damaged the competition's integrity.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: Combin was kicked in the face by Poletti and later had his nose and cheekbone broken by the elbow of Ramón Aguirre Suárez. Bloodied and broken, Combin was asked to return to the pitch by the referee but fainted. While unconscious, Combin was arrested by Argentine police on a charge of draft dodging, having not undertaken military service in the country. The player was forced to spend a night in the cells, eventually being released after explaining he had fulfilled national service requirements as a French citizen. Estudiantes won the game 2–1 but Milan took the title on aggregate.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: Italian newspaper "Gazzetta dello Sport" dubbed it "Ninety minutes of a man-hunt". The Argentinean press responded with "The English were right" – a reference to Alf Ramsey's famous description of the Argentina national football team as "animals" during the 1966 FIFA World Cup. The Argentinean Football Association (AFA), under heavy international pressure, took stern action. Argentina's president, military dictator Juan Carlos Onganía, summoned Estudiantes delegate Oscar Ferrari and demanded "the severest appropriate measures in defence of the good name of the national sport. [It was a] lamentable spectacle which breached most norms of sporting ethics". Poletti was banned from the sport for life, Suárez was banned for 30 games, and Eduardo Manera for 20 with the former and latter serving a month in jail.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: Due to the brutality in the 1967 match, FIFA was called into providing penalties and regulating the tournament. However, FIFA stated that it could not stipulate regulations in a competition that it did not organise. Though the competition was endorsed by UEFA and CONMEBOL, René Courte, FIFA's General Sub-Secretary, wrote an article shortly afterwards (1967) stating that FIFA viewed the competition as a "European-South American friendly match". Courte's statement was endorsed by then–FIFA president Sir Stanley Rous, who then stated that FIFA saw the Intercontinental Cup as a friendly match. After these controversial statements, Madrid newspaper "ABC" then pointed out that, though the Intercontinental Cup was not endorsed by FIFA, it was endorsed by UEFA and CONMEBOL, therefore being an "intercontinental jurisdiction" cup. However, with the Asian and North-Central-American/Caribbean club competitions in place, FIFA opened the idea of supervising the Intercontinental Cup if it included those confederations, which was met with a negative response from its participating confederations, UEFA and CONMEBOL. According to Stanley Rous, CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation had requested, in 1967, their participation in the Intercontinental Cup, which was rejected by UEFA and CONMEBOL. In 1970, the FIFA Executive Committee gathering put forward, unsuccessfully, a proposal for the expansion of the Intercontinental Cup into a Club World Cup with representative clubs of every existing continental confederation. Nevertheless, some European champions started to decline participation in the tournament after the events of 1969.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: Estudiantes would face Dutch side Feyenoord the following season, which saw the Dutch side victorious. Oscar Malbernat ripped off Joop van Daele's glasses and trampled on them claiming that he was "not allowed to play with glasses". Dutch side Ajax, European champions of 1971, would decline to face Uruguay's Nacional due to violence in previous matches, which resulted in European Cup runners-up, Greek side Panathinaikos, participating. Ajax fears about Nacional's brutal game were confirmed. In the first game in Athens, Uruguayian striker Julio Morales broke the leg of Yiannis Tomaras with a brutal blow. According to the Greek press of the time, the sound of the fracture was heard up to the stands. The Greek defender collapsed on the ground and was transported unconscious out of the field. The medical diagnosis was a fracture of the tibia and fibula, an injury that effectively ended his career. Nacional won the series 3–2 on aggregate.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: Ajax participated in 1972 against Independiente. The team's arrival at Buenos Aires was extremely hostile: Johan Cruyff received several death threats from Independiente's local fan firms. Due to the indifference from the Argentine police, Ajax manager Ştefan Kovács appointed an organised emergency security detail for the "Nederlandse meester", headed by himself and team member Barry Hulshoff, described as a big and burly man. In the first leg, Cruyff opened the scoring in Avellaneda at the 5th minute. As a result, Dante Mircoli retaliated with a vicious tackle a couple of minutes later; Cruyff was too injured to continue and the Dutch team found themselves being assaulted with tackles and punches. Kovács had to convince his team to play on during half-time as his players wanted to withdraw. Ajax squeezed a 1–1 tie and followed up with a 3–0 trounce in Amsterdam to win the Cup. Although Ajax were the defending champions, they again declined to participate a year later after Independiente won the Libertadores again, leaving it to Juventus, European Cup runners-up, to play a single-match final won by the Argentines.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: Also in 1973, French newspaper "L'Équipe", which helped to bring about the birth of the European Cup, volunteered to sponsor a Club World Cup contested by the champions of Europe, South America, Central and North America and Africa, the only continental club tournaments in existence at the time; the competition was to potentially take place in Paris between September and October 1974 with an eventual final to be held at the Parc des Princes. The proposal, supported by the South Americans, was dismissed due to the negativity of the Europeans. In 1974, João Havelange was elected FIFA president, having made the proposal, among others, of creating a multicontinental Club World Cup. In 1975, "L'Équipe" once again made its 1973 proposal, again to no avail.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: West German club Bayern Munich also declined to play in 1974 as Independiente again qualified to participate. European Cup runners-up Atlético Madrid from Spain won the competition 2–1 on aggregate. Once again, Independiente qualified to participate in 1975; this time, both finalists of the European Cup declined to participate and the competition was not played. That same year, "L'Équipe" tried, once again, to create a Club World Cup, in which the participants would have been: the four semifinalists of the European Cup, both finalists of the Copa Libertadores, as well as the African and Asian champions. However, UEFA declined once again and the proposal failed.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: In 1976, when Brazilian side Cruzeiro won the Copa Libertadores, the European champions Bayern Munich willingly participated, with the Bavarians winning 2–0 on aggregate. In an interview with "Jornal do Brasil", Bayern's manager Dettmar Cramer denied that Bayern's refusal to dispute the 1974 and 1975 Intercontinental Cups were a result of the rivals being Argentine teams. He claimed it was a scheduling impossibility, rather, which kept the Germans from participating. He also stated that the competition was not economically rewarding due to the team's fan base's disinterest in the Cup. To cover the costs of playing the first leg in Munich's Olympiastadion, the organisers needed to have a minimum of 25,000 spectators. However, due to heavy snow and cold weather, only 18,000 showed up. Because of this deficit, Cramer stated that if Bayern were to win the European Cup again, they would decline to participate as it held no assurances of income.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: Argentine side Boca Juniors qualified for the 1977 and 1978 matches, for which the European champions, English club Liverpool, declined to participate on both occasions. In 1977, Boca Juniors defeated European Cup runners-up, German club Borussia Mönchengladbach, 5–2 on aggregate. Boca Juniors declined to face Belgian club Brugge in 1978 leaving that year's competition undisputed. Paraguay's Olimpia won the 1979 match against European Cup runners-up, Swedish side Malmö FF, after winning both legs. However, the competition had greatly declined in prestige. After the 0–1 win of the South Americans in the first leg at Malmö, which saw fewer than 5,000 Swedish fans turn up, Spanish newspaper "El Mundo Deportivo" called the Cup "a dog without an owner".


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: According to Brazilian newspaper "O Estado de São Paulo", the deal for the establishment of the Interamerican Cup was made in 1968 by CONMEBOL and CONCACAF, and established that the Interamerican Cup champion club would be entitled to represent the American continent in the Intercontinental Cup. According to the Mexican newspapers, after winning the 1977 and 1980 Interamerican Cup tournaments, Mexican clubs América and PUMAS Unam, and the Mexican Football Association, demanded, unsuccessfully, to participate in the Intercontinental Cup, either by representing the American continent against the European champions or by creating a UEFA-CONMEBOL-CONCACAF tournament.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: Seeing the deterioration of the Intercontinental Cup, Japanese motor corporation Toyota took the competition under its wing, and created contractual obligations to have the Intercontinental Cup played in Japan once a year, with every club participating being obliged to participate or face legal consequences. This modern format breathed new air into the competition which saw a new trophy handed out along with the Intercontinental Cup, the Toyota Cup.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: In order to protect themselves against the possibility of European withdrawals, Toyota, UEFA and every European Cup participant signed annual contracts requiring the eventual winners of the European Cup to participate at the Intercontinental Cup – this was added as a condition to those UEFA stipulated for clubs to participate in the European Cup –or face an international lawsuit from UEFA and Toyota.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: The first Toyota Cup was held in 1980, which saw Uruguay's Nacional triumph over Nottingham Forest. The 1980s saw a domination by South American sides as Brazil's Flamengo and Grêmio , Uruguay's Nacional and Peñarol, Argentina's Independiente and River Plate take the spoils once each after Nacional's victory in 1980. Only Juventus, Porto and Milan managed to bring the trophy back to Europe.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: In that decade, the English Football Association attempted to organise a Club World Cup sponsored by promoting company West Nally, only to be shot down by UEFA.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: The 1990s proved to be a decade dominated by European teams, as Milan, Red Star Belgrade, Ajax, Juventus, Real Madrid, Manchester United, and newcomers Borussia Dortmund of Germany were fuelled to victory by their economic powers and heavy poaching of South American stars. Only three titles went to South America, as São Paulo and Argentina's Vélez Sársfield came out the winners, each of them defeating Milan, with São Paulo's inaugural win being over Barcelona.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: The 2000s would see Boca Juniors win the competition twice for South America, while European victories came from Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, and Porto.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: The 2004 Intercontinental Cup proved to be the last one, as the competition was merged with the FIFA Club World Cup.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: All the winning teams from Intercontinental Cup were regarded as de facto "world club champions". According to some texts on FIFA.com, due to the superiority at sporting level of the European and South American clubs to the rest of the world, reflected earlier in the tournament for national teams, the winning clubs of the Intercontinental Cup were named world champions and can claim to be symbolic World champions, in a "symbolic" club world championship, while the FIFA Club World Cup would have another dimension, as the "true" world club showdown, created because, with the passage of time and the development of football outside Europe and South America, it had become "unrealistic" to continue to confer the symbolic title of world champion upon the winners of the Intercontinental Cup, the idea to expand it being mentioned for the first time in 1967 by Stanley Rous as CONCACAF and the AFC had established their continental club competitions and requested the participation, an expansion that was to occur only in 2000 through the 2000 FIFA Club World Championship. Nevertheless, some European champions started to decline participation in the tournament after the events of 1969. Though "symbolic" or "de facto" as a club world championship, the Intercontinental Cup has always been an official title at interconfederation level, with both UEFA and CONMEBOL having always considered all editions of the competition as part of their honours.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: Throughout the history of football, various attempts have been made to organise a tournament that identifies "the best club team in the world" – such as the Football World Championship, the Lipton Trophy, the Copa Rio, the Pequeña Copa del Mundo and the International Soccer League– due to FIFA's lack of interest or inability to organise club competitions, – the Intercontinental Cup is considered by FIFA as the predecessor to the FIFA Club World Cup, which was held for the first time in 2000.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: On 27 October 2017, the FIFA Council, while not promoting statistical unification between the Intercontinental Cup and the Club World Cup, in respect to the history of the two tournaments (which merged in 2005), has made official ("de jure") the world title of the Intercontinental Cup, recognising all the winners as club world champions, with the same title of the FIFA Club World Cup winners, or "FIFA Club World Champions".


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: FIFA recognises the Intercontinental Cup as the sole direct predecessor of the Club World Cup, and the champions of both aforementioned competitions are the only ones uncontroversially officially recognised by FIFA as Club World Champions, as seen in the "FIFA" "Club World Cup Statistical Kit", the official document of FIFA's club competition.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: On the recognition request of the 1951 worldwide club cup, see "Copa Rio (international tournament)".


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: The competition trophy bears the words ""Coupe Européenne-Sudamericaine"" ("European-South American Cup") at the top. At the base of the trophy, there is the round logo of UEFA and a map of South America in a circle.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: During the sponsorship by Toyota, the competition awarded an additional trophy, entitled ""Toyota Cup"", usually given to the winning team's vice-captain.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: From 1960 to 1979, the Intercontinental Cup was played in two legs. Between 1960 and 1968, the cup was decided on points only, the same format used by CONMEBOL to determine the winner of the Copa Libertadores final through 1987. Because of this format, a third match was needed when both teams were equal on points. Commonly this match was host by the continent where the last game of the series was played. From 1969 through 1979, the competition adopted the European standard method of aggregate score, with away goals.


title: Intercontinental Cup (football)

text: Starting in 1980, the final became a single match. Up until 2001, the matches were held at Tokyo's National Stadium. Finals since 2002 were held at the Yokohama International Stadium, also the venue of the 2002 FIFA World Cup final.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: Mortal Kombat (also known as Mortal Kombat 9) is a 2011 fighting video game developed by NetherRealm Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. It is the ninth main installment in the "Mortal Kombat" franchise and a reboot of the series. The game was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 systems in April 2011, and a PlayStation Vita port was released in May 2012. An expanded version of the game, titled Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition, was released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in February 2012 and for Microsoft Windows in July 2013.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: Although beginning during the events of "", the plot is a retcon to the earliest period in the "Mortal Kombat" series: the events of the first three games (as well as the third game's two updates). The storyline involves the divine protector of Earth, Raiden, attempting to change the aftermath of the events of "Armageddon" by contacting his past self as he faces defeat at the hands of the evil emperor of Outworld, Shao Kahn. While having characters and levels rendered in three-dimensions, the gameplay distances itself from the 3D graphics style seen in the last five games, bearing closer resemblance to that of the 2D era of the series, using a camera that is perpendicular to the two-dimensional playing field. Colloquially this is called 2.5D.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: Upon release, "Mortal Kombat" received very positive reviews and won several awards for fighting game of the year. It was also a commercial success, selling one million copies in the first month alone. Due to its extremely violent content, the game was banned in Australia due to the lack of appropriate ratings category, and South Korea, and it has been reportedly indexed in Germany; the Australian ban was later lifted due to the introduction of an R18 classification and the game was released with many other R-rated games in May 2013. A sequel, "Mortal Kombat X" was released in 2015 with another direct follow-up, "Mortal Kombat 11", releasing in 2019.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: Principal gameplay involves one-on-one 2.5D-style fighting. "Mortal Kombat" uses a single two-dimensional fighting plane (at 60 frames per second), although characters are rendered in three-dimensional fashion, intended to give depth and range to portrayals of various projectiles. Unlike previous "Mortal Kombat" games, four buttons on the game controller represent attacks and are each linked to a corresponding limb.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: A new feature is the "super meter", which can be charged by various actions during battle such as performing special moves, getting blocked by the opponent, or getting hit by them. The super meter can be charged to three levels, each of them enabling a different action to be performed. At the first level, it can be used to deliver an enhanced version of one of the character's special attacks; two levels can be used to interrupt a combo attack, and the full three levels allow for the delivery of a special attack called an "X-ray move". The X-ray move unleashes a series of attacks during which the game provides an internal view of the character being attacked, which shows their bones and organs being broken or ruptured.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: Extra features include a story mode during which the player plays as multiple characters, a Fatality training mode (allowing players to practice executing finishing moves), the Challenge Tower, tag team fighting, and an online mode. The Challenge Tower mode is a single-player option that includes 300 specific challenges of various difficulties providing currency rewards upon completion; players have the option of using in-game currency to bypass other difficult challenges, completing them later. Among the various challenges are "Test Your Might" (rapidly pressing buttons and using specific timing to destroy blocks of varying difficulty), "Test Your Sight" (following an object hidden under a cup or skull and revealing the object after a shuffle), "Test Your Strike" (destroying a specific block in a stack) and "Test Your Luck" (fighting under certain conditions, such as no jumping). The four-player tag-team feature is an original feature, allowing two players to play together. During tag gameplay, two new types of attacks become available. The first of them is the "tag assist" attack, in which the off-screen character temporarily jumps in and performs certain attacks during the active character's combo. The other is the "tag kombo", in which the active character performs a combo that is finished by the off-screen character as they enter the fight.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: The online mode includes a "King of the Hill" option, where up to eight players can act as spectators and play the winner of a fight. Spectators may also rate the fights and use the "forum" to determine how to perform various combos or moves observed during a fight. A single-use online pass is also included with the game which is mandatory to access the online components. Online passes are also available from the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace. There is also a PlayStation 3-exclusive 3D display mode, for which 3D glasses are not necessary.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: The game's director, Ed Boon, described it as an altered re-telling of the events of the first three "Mortal Kombat" games ("Mortal Kombat", "Mortal Kombat II" and "Mortal Kombat 3"):


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: During the war, all warriors from the realms have been killed, leaving only Raiden and Shao Kahn remaining. Having defeated Blaze, Shao Khan is imbued with godlike power and easily overpowers Raiden. In a final attempt to stop Shao Kahn, Raiden casts one last spell to send a message to his past self through his shattered amulet, with the vague message "He must win" before being killed.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: During the events of the first tournament from the first game, the past Raiden sees visions of the future due to the message he received and notices his amulet has been damaged. Raiden concludes that Liu Kang must win the tournament to save Earthrealm. During the tournament, Liu Kang becomes the only remaining Earthrealm contender, due in part to Scorpion's murder of Bi-Han, better known as Sub-Zero, in retaliation for the latter's massacre of the former's Shirai Ryu clan including Scorpion's wife and infant son some years earlier. Liu Kang is successful in defeating the Shokan Prince Goro, as well as the crafty sorcerer Shang Tsung. Raiden's amulet, however, cracks further, a sign that future events remain unchanged. Disappointed with the sorcerer's failure, emperor Shao Kahn orders Shang Tsung's execution, but is convinced otherwise when the sorcerer suggests holding a second tournament in Outworld with different stakes: if Earthrealm wins, Outworld will leave them alone forever, but if Outworld wins, they will be allowed to invade Earthrealm uninhibited. Though he initially refuses, Raiden relents when Tarkatans invade Earthrealm as part of Shang Tsung's blackmail against Earthrealm.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: During the second tournament, Bi-Han's younger brother Kuai Liang decides to become the new Sub-Zero, and he and his friend Smoke arrive to avenge his brother. They are followed by Lin Kuei cyber assassins Sektor and Cyrax who are tasked with retrieving the rogue warriors for cybernetic conversion. Raiden changes the timeline by rescuing Smoke from being converted, at the cost of Kuai Liang being taken away. Kitana, the adopted daughter of Shao Kahn, chooses to join Earthrealm's fight after learning of the existence of her half-Tarkatan clone Mileena, created by Shang Tsung on Shao Kahn's orders, with Kitana's childhood friend Jade, joining her later. In a bid to save Earth, Raiden substitutes Kung Lao in place of Liu Kang during the tournament. Following his victory over Shang Tsung, the ruler of Netherrealm, Quan Chi, and the fire-breathing Kintaro, Kung Lao's neck is snapped by Shao Kahn while his back was turned, killing him, with Liu Kang retaliating and mortally wounding the emperor in a fit of rage. Raiden's amulet continues to deteriorate and he becomes increasingly concerned.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: Shao Kahn is healed by Quan Chi, at which point the two realms enter into an alliance. Quan Chi also revives and brainwashes Shao Kahn's long-dead wife, Sindel. In doing so, the ward that prevents Kahn's physical access to Earthrealm is nullified and a full-scale invasion is now possible. Raiden saves Johnny Cage from certain death by slaying the centaurian Motaro. Joined by police officers Stryker and former Black Dragon member Kabal, the Earthrealm fighters attempt to stop Kahn's invasion. Kintaro severely burns Kabal but he is revived by Kano, which greatly increases Kabal's speed. Kahn dramatically enhances Sindel's power by sacrificing Tsung, taking the souls he has stolen for centuries and infusing them into Sindel.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: Raiden and Liu Kang travel to appeal to the Elder Gods, requesting they stop Shao Kahn's invasion. The Elder Gods refuse, saying that Kahn's invasion does not violate their laws, and that only attempting to merge Earthrealm into Outworld would be a violation.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: While Raiden and Liu Kang are away, Sindel leads an Outworlder attack on the heroes. In the battle, many of the assembled warriors are killed by Sindel, and Kitana is brutally beaten. Before Sindel can kill her, Nightwolf intervenes and sacrifices himself in order to kill her. Raiden and Liu Kang return soon after, and Kitana dies of her wounds after sharing her final words with Liu Kang, leaving Cage and Sonya Blade as the only survivors, but both of them are too injured to continue fighting.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: Raiden attempts to ally with Quan Chi, offering the souls of the deceased heroes as payment. Quan Chi declines, and reveals he already has possession of the heroes' souls and has turned them into undead "revenants". Quan Chi's words make Raiden realize that "He must win" refers to Shao Kahn himself; should Kahn conquer Earthrealm without victory in Mortal Kombat, the Elder Gods will punish him. Liu Kang, angered by the seemingly pointless deaths of their allies, blames Raiden and goes to attack Shao Kahn alone. Raiden tries to stop Liu Kang, but ends up accidentally killing him when Liu Kang's fire mixes with Raiden's lightning, burning Liu Kang alive. Overcome with guilt, Raiden surrenders to Shao Kahn, at which point, the Elder Gods intervene, imbuing Raiden with their power, which he then uses to defeat and kill Shao Kahn for violating the Mortal Kombat code.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: After Shao Kahn's death, Raiden vows to rebuild Earthrealm with Cage and Blade. Quan Chi, now shown to be an agent of Shinnok, the exiled Elder God of darkness, reveals that the destruction of Shao Kahn and the weakening of Earthrealm by the death of their fighters was part of their plan to conquer all the realms for their own bidding.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: The game had 28 playable characters at launch. Four other fighters were DLC characters. The playable characters in bold are new to the series, while the "italicized" ones are guest characters.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: Cyber Sub-Zero and Quan Chi are secret characters in the original PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions, however they are unlocked in the "Komplete Edition". Goro, Kintaro and Shao Kahn are non-playable boss characters. Kratos is a PlayStation exclusive. Sweet Tooth was considered to be the PlayStation exclusive before Kratos was chosen. Marcus Fenix was supposed to be included as an Xbox exclusive. However, according to Ed Boon, he said that the character becomes too "agile" and was not included in the Xbox 360 version. Master Chief was briefly considered as an Xbox exclusive as well. Another planned character that never made it was Chuck Greene from the "Dead Rising" series. Tremor is included in the PlayStation Vita version, only in some character challenge towers. Motaro and Shinnok appear in a few cutscenes in the story mode.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: In a November 2008 interview, Ed Boon stated that game sales for "Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe" would dictate what features would appear in "the next game". In 2009, Midway Games Chicago filed for bankruptcy and was purchased by Warner Bros. Interactive. This led the game to be developed by NetherRealm Studios, becoming the first installment in the series to be published exclusively under the Warner Bros. label. On June 18, 2009, Boon confirmed on his Twitter page that developers were performing motion capture for the game and that it would not feature superheroes. Dan Forden was also expected to return as the music composer for the game. In late 2009, Boon stated that the franchise was returning to its bloody origins and that the production team were aiming for a "Mature" rating, as opposed to the "Teen" on the previous game. Boon also showed concern about content being classified under the "Adults Only" rating.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: "Mortal Kombat" was officially revealed on June 10, 2010, with a release for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2011. It was revealed at the Sony E3 press conference that "Mortal Kombat" would be 3D compatible, and Boon said that in dealing with the 3D capability, more attention to detail was required so as to not obstruct the gameplay. Boon said that the extra mode from previous games ("The Krypt") would return with an "elaborate and sophisticated unlocking system" and put "the other games in the series to shame." He also said they intended for "Mortal Kombat" to be accessible to the casual player and more "engaging", with experts on the fighting genre consulted. New features were made to create a deeper fighting experience. Some mild humorous elements were also included, such as the Babality finishing moves. At the time, Boon said that the production team were considering a PC port of "Mortal Kombat" as "there seems to be a market for [PC games] in Europe."


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: "Mortal Kombat" runs on a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 3, similar to the engine used by its predecessor, "Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe". Developers recreated the entire fighting engine so that it was restricted to a two-dimensional plane of fighting, with senior producer Hans Lo stating at Gamescom 2010 that the change from 3D gameplay to 2D was advantageous for "Mortal Kombat", as it increased graphical detail for characters and arenas and improved gameplay speed. Another new mechanic is the inclusion of "blood physics" (blood loss is portrayed as being more natural and being clearly visible on characters or surroundings). Developers stated that online gameplay for "Mortal Kombat" would be a main priority, declaring interest in capabilities to link the player's progression feed to their accounts on social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter, and recreate the feel of socializing with players in an arcade.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: According to Dave Pindara, one of the lead artists for "Mortal Kombat", environments were developed to create active objects and effects such as "scripted cinema events", "dynamic lighting effects" and "characters and objects that animated and reacted to the fights." Arena development began with 18 arenas, but development of environments with different times of day and original arenas related to the plot scaled up arena development to roughly 30 arenas. One unique feature is included with each stage such as "The Desert" which has a "sand tech", allowing for realistic sand motion during characters' interaction. Dan Forden, lead sound designer, said the intent was to create a "cinematic game audio experience". Sound effect design included use and enhancement of the "bone-crunching audio design" of previous titles and, while the "dynamic experience" was vital, small details such as the "rustling of fighter's clothes" and background sounds were also included. Music for each stage was similar to previous games but with "a completely new arrangement".


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: Boon said that there was a focus on including characters from the first three "Mortal Kombat" games and that "if you have a favorite character from those games, you're probably going to see him or her in the game." The game's developers stated that the characters had been designed with the intent to make each character unique – each having his or her own individual stance, victory pose and Fatality with no shared animations. Lead designer John Edwards said that characters are differentiated by features such as power and speed. Producer Shaun Himmerick said that the internal and external character design required "two months or ten weeks". Boon said that an exclusive character was planned for the Xbox 360 version, but "unfortunately, the circumstances didn't allow us to make a 360 exclusive." Boon also said they were in talks to include Sweet Tooth from Sony's "Twisted Metal" franchise.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: On April 5, 2011, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and NetherRealm Studios announced "Mortal Kombat" was finished and ready for mass production, with pre-orders having gone "gold". Asked what would be the correct way to call it, for example ""MK9"" or ""MK2011"", Boon answered he would say "The "Mortal Kombat" game they rebooted in 2011."


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: On August 31, 2010, a teaser trailer "Shadows" debuted on IGN, featuring a track "Another Way to Die" from the band Disturbed's album "Asylum". On September 28, 2010, the slogan "Kombat Begins In ..." appeared with a clock counting down on the "Mortal Kombat" official website, the countdown ending on Monday October 11, 2010. At the conclusion of the countdown, a link to the Facebook page was added to the website and an accompanying Facebook application was also released that showcased a teaser trailer for the game.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: On October 4, 2010, the "Environment Bio" trailer of the "Mortal Kombat" arena, The Pit, was released to explain the in-game backstory on its origins and evolution. Similar videos featuring The Living Forest, the Dead Pool, and Kahn's Coliseum were released afterward, also explaining background information on the stages. In a similar fashion, character profile videos were released for Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Mileena, Liu Kang and Raiden. In April 2011, "Playboy" models Jo Garcia and Brittney Palmer (dressed as Mileena and Kitana, respectively) promoted the game in a sponsored vlog advertisement. In April 2011, Bespoke Arcades created a series of arcade machines to promote the game at the Gadget Show Live 2011. In April 2012, two live-action cosplay trailers featuring Rachelle Glover (Kitana) and Danni Levy (Mileena) were released; they were later combined into one commercial video titled "Fight Anywhere".


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: On March 8, 2011, a demo version of the game was released for download globally, initially exclusively for PlayStation Plus members. The demo (an arcade ladder with single- or two-player capability) showcases four characters (Johnny Cage, Mileena, Scorpion and Sub-Zero) and the stages The Living Forest and The Pit. Performance Design Products sponsored the inaugural National Mortal Kombat Championship, which took place in Las Vegas in May 2011. "Mortal Kombat" was also internationally presented in the 2011 Evolution Championship Series (Evo), being recognized as a "main tournament fighting game". "Professional gamers" Justin Wong (winner of the PDP championship) and Carl 'Perfect Legend' White (the Evo 2011 champion) spoke positively of "Mortal Kombat"s place in future tournament events.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: "Mortal Kombat" was available for pre-order in three different editions: Standard, Kollector's Edition (includes a copy of the game, art book, Sub-Zero and Scorpion figurine bookends and a downloadable content (DLC) skin, dubbed a Mortal Kombat Klassic costume), and the Tournament Edition (includes a fight stick controller instead of the bookends and art book). A European version of the Kollector's Edition was also released, which includes the game, art book, a Scorpion & Sub-Zero figurine, a Steelbook case and downloadable skins.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: In the United States, pre-orders at retailers Toys "R" Us and Wal-Mart were provided with classic "Mortal Kombat" skins for Kitana and Mileena, modeled after their "Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3" appearances. A classic Jade skin (also using her "UMK3" model) was also included with pre-orders of "Mortal Kombat" or "" on Blu-ray (both released April 19, 2011). GameStop, Best Buy and Amazon.com also participated in pre-order bonuses and included classic costumes and Fatalities for Scorpion, Sub-Zero and Reptile respectively. "Mortal Kombat"-themed costumes were also provided for the owners of Xbox 360 avatars who preordered any version of the game.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: Netherrealm Studios released the Klassic DLC pack (containing the classic outfits and Fatalities that were exclusive to pre-order deals) on June 7, 2011. Downloadable characters include Skarlet (a newly introduced red female character based on a glitch rumor from "Mortal Kombat II"), Kenshi (first introduced in ""), Rain (first seen in "Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3"), Kratos from the "God of War" series, and Freddy Krueger from the "A Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise. A free compatibility pack is available alongside each character that contains "klassic" skins for two characters and is available to all players. A "Season Pass" available to Xbox 360 users offered the first four DLC characters together at an overall discounted price. Warner Bros. is one of the first game companies that introduced the concept of season pass: a long term, pre-paid, post-launch downloadable content plan.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: The PlayStation Vita version of "Mortal Kombat" was announced on January 18, 2012. It was released on May 1, 2012, in North America and on May 4 in Europe. The Vita version of the game includes all the features from the PlayStation 3 version of "Komplete Edition", and adds new costumes and a new Challenge Tower that are not available in the console versions, as well as touchscreen controls for finishing moves and other exclusive features, but removes one stage. The online servers for the Vita port were shut down on July 16, 2014.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: On January 9, 2012, Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment announced "Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition". This version was released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on February 28, 2012, in North America and on March 2 in the United Kingdom, and consists of the game with all of the downloadable content released for it. The North American release also includes download codes for the album "", as well as the 1995 film "Mortal Kombat" (available via the PlayStation Store or Xbox Live).


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: In May 2011, Ed Boon hinted on his Twitter account that a Mac version of the game was more likely than a PC one. By February 2012, developers stated there were no immediate plans for a PC version, but were "gauging interest". On May 22, 2013, it was announced that the "Komplete Edition" would be released for Windows on July 3, 2013. Initially, the game became only available through Steam but a retail version followed during the first days of August.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: As of March 21, 2020, Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition has been removed from Steam due to changes with Warner Brother Games' network.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: According to Ed Boon, during its release month, "Mortal Kombat" sold one million copies between both PlayStation 3 and Xbox versions. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, publisher of NetherRealm Studios' "Mortal Kombat", reported that "Mortal Kombat" had sold close to three million units as of August 2011. According to Warner Bros., this covered the cost of the entire Midway asset acquisition. By 2013, the game had sold closer to 4 million.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: Prior to the game's release, Techtree listed "Mortal Kombat" as "one of the reasons for people to own a gaming console in 2011", with "PC Magazine" and 2D-X editor Jeffrey L. Wilson claiming this was one of the most anticipated titles of E3 2010. The E3 2010 showcase version of "Mortal Kombat" received the Best Fighting Game of E3 and Best Stage Demo of E3 awards by GameSpot, Later, "Mortal Kombat" won several Game of the Year type awards for the best fighting game of 2011.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: "Mortal Kombat" received critical acclaim from critics. GameZone's David Sanchez considered calling the game as "a fitting reboot for the series" would be an understatement, and stated that the game, "while offering plenty of nostalgia", is "a major step up for the series". Andrew Reiner of "Game Informer" called it "the best "Mortal Kombat" yet." According to Mark Waltron of GameSpot, "over-the-top, bloody, and bursting with content, "Mortal Kombat" is a return to form for the franchise." IGN's Ryan Clements called it an "amazing" game that "combines the novelty of extreme violence with a great fighting engine." Neidel Crisan of 1UP.com stated it "has simply set the standard for future fighting games to follow." Eurogamer's Matt Edwards was more critical of the game, but added that "to judge "Mortal Kombat" harshly simply because it isn't the equal of "BlazBlue" or "Street Fighter IV" on a technical level would be unfair to what the game does right." Brett Elston of GamesRadar was also more cautious in his review, stating it is "a successful sequel that both reboots and redeems the wayward series, though it's not a flawless victory."


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: "Mortal Kombat"'s gameplay was generally well-received due to its balance, violence and use of what GameTrailers called a "classic 2D template". Reiner wrote that "the only area where Mortal Kombat feels antiquated is in its AI." Waltron praised the game for having "one of the most in-depth story modes to grace a fighting game." Crisan compared it to "watching a full length CG movie", and said that while "incredibly corny, it's also oddly addicting" due to its over-the-top plot. One complaint concerned the shifting levels of difficulty in the game's story mode, described by Clements as forcing the player "to fight cheap tactics with cheap tactics." According to Elston, "character balance, inconsistent detection and a stingy coin reward system drag down an otherwise bloody good time."


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: One year after the game's release, GameZone's Sanchez stated that "Mortal Kombat" has still remained "the best fighter currently on the market," calling it "today's greatest modern fighter" and "one of the most compelling fighters to come along in years."


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: The PlayStation Vita version of the game was also well received. Dan Ryckert of "Game Informer" called it "the most complete version of "Mortal Kombat" available," while Brett Zeidler of Destructoid hailed it as "a perfect example of keeping the best graphical fidelity possible and including an already astronomical amount of content." According to Walton, "despite a few control issues" regarding tag team combos, ""Mortal Kombat" on the Vita is every bit the great and gruesome fighter as its console counterparts." Steven Hopper of IGN recommended this "great port" for those who did not play the original release enough.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: The PC version of "Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition" was well-received despite being released two years later than the console versions; the PC version received an 81/100 score on Metacritic. In August 2013, questioned about the sales performance of the Windows version of the game, Boon tweeted that it was "WAY, WAY above expectations".


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: In February 2011, the game was refused classification by the Australian Classification Board due to "violence that exceeds strong in impact". Warner Bros. unsuccessfully appealed the decision to the Classification Review Board, who ruled "the impact of the violence in Mortal Kombat is higher than strong and thus could not be accommodated within the MA15+ classification." The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service listed the game as a prohibited item and the Australian Minister for Home Affairs Brendan O'Connor asked to be briefed on the "Mortal Kombat" decision, citing "public disquiet on the issue". In 2012, the Vita version of "Mortal Kombat" was banned in Australia as well. A spokesperson for Warner Bros. commented: "We felt that because of the Vita's size, the smaller screen would minimise the impact of the violence in the game and we felt it might fit within the MA15+ category. Obviously, the Classification Board of Australia did not agree." In 2013, however, following the introduction of an R18+ classification, the Komplete edition of "Mortal Kombat" was released uncensored on May 1, 2013, with the R18+ rating.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: "Mortal Kombat" was also indexed in Germany by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons due to "drastic representations of violence," and was banned in South Korea due to its excessive depiction of blood and gore.


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: Netherrealm Studios' success with "Mortal Kombat"'s story mode influenced Netherrealm's "" series, and inspired developers of future fighting games to create similar film-like experiences in their games, like "Guilty Gear Xrd", "Tekken 7", "Street Fighter V", and "".


title: Mortal Kombat (2011 video game)

text: A sequel for the game, "Mortal Kombat X", was developed by NetherRealm Studios for the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One and was released in April 2015.


title: Astroturfing

text: Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants. It is a practice intended to give the statements or organizations credibility by withholding information about the source's financial connection. The term "astroturfing" is derived from AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to resemble natural grass, as a play on the word "grassroots". The implication behind the use of the term is that instead of a "true" or "natural" grassroots effort behind the activity in question, there is a "fake" or "artificial" appearance of support.


title: Astroturfing

text: In political science, it is defined as the process of seeking electoral victory or legislative relief for grievances by helping political actors find and mobilize a sympathetic public, and is designed to create the image of public consensus where there is none. Astroturfing is the use of fake grassroots efforts that primarily focus on influencing public opinion and typically are funded by corporations and governmental entities to form opinions.