title: The Ballad of Jack and Rose

text: "The Ballad of Jack and Rose" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2005; it was later given a limited theatrical release on March 23, 2005, grossing $59,459 in its opening weekend, in four theaters. The highest position it reached was during its second week of release, grossing $135,100, and the lowest position it reached was at its last week of release, grossing $406. Its widest release was 74 theaters. The film grossed $712,275 domestically and just $916,051 worldwide.


title: The Ballad of Jack and Rose

text: Critical reception to the film was heavily divided; some critics disliked the film, such as Todd McCarthy of "Variety", who wrote that it "gets caught up in incidental distractions that lead the drama astray". Others praised it; Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" called the film a "model of artistic, provocative American filmmaking".


title: The Ballad of Jack and Rose

text: The heavy divide between critical praise and disdain was further illustrated by critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper, who were at odds when reviewing the film on their television program. Ebert praised the film on most accounts, ultimately calling it "an absorbing experience". Roeper, on the other hand, although impressed by the cinematography, dismissed the film and criticized the portrayal of the character of Jack, ultimately saying: "Jack and Rose's ballad is a sour song punctuated by ugly behavior from characters who are supposed to be sympathetic".


title: The Ballad of Jack and Rose

text: The 16mm shot film was released on VHS and DVD on August 16, 2005 by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and MGM Home Entertainment. The DVD contained commentary with director and writer Rebecca Miller and the making of "The Ballad of Jack and Rose".


title: Covariance and contravariance of vectors

text: In physics, especially in multilinear algebra and tensor analysis, covariance and contravariance describe how the quantitative description of certain geometric or physical entities changes with a change of basis. In modern mathematical notation, the role is sometimes swapped.


text: In physics, a basis is sometimes thought of as a set of reference axes. A change of scale on the reference axes corresponds to a change of units in the problem. For instance, by changing scale from meters to centimeters (that is, "dividing" the scale of the reference axes by 100), the components of a measured velocity vector are "multiplied" by 100. A vector changes scale "inversely" to changes in scale to the reference axes, and consequently is called "contravariant". As a result, a vector often has units of distance or distance with other units (as, for example, velocity has units of distance divided by time).


text: In contrast, a covector, also called a "dual vector", typically has units of the inverse of distance or the inverse of distance with other units. For example, a gradient which has units of a spatial derivative, or distance. The components of a covector changes in the "same way" as changes to scale of the reference axes, and consequently is called "covariant".


text: A third concept related to covariance and contravariance is invariance. An example of a physical observable that does not change with a change of scale on the reference axes is the mass of a particle, which has units of mass (that is, no units of distance). The single, scalar value of mass is independent of changes to the scale of the reference axes and consequently is called "invariant".


text: Curvilinear coordinate systems, such as cylindrical or spherical coordinates, are often used in physical and geometric problems. Associated with any coordinate system is a natural choice of coordinate basis for vectors based at each point of the space, and covariance and contravariance are particularly important for understanding how the coordinate description of a vector changes by passing from one coordinate system to another.


text: The terms "covariant" and "contravariant" were introduced by James Joseph Sylvester in 1851 in the context of associated algebraic forms theory. Tensors are objects in multilinear algebra that can have aspects of both covariance and contravariance.


text: In the lexicon of category theory, covariance and contravariance are properties of functors; unfortunately, it is the lower-index objects (covectors) that generically have pullbacks, which are contravariant, while the upper-index objects (vectors) instead have pushforwards, which are covariant. This terminological conflict may be avoided by calling contravariant functors "cofunctors"—in accord with the "covector" terminology, and continuing the tradition of treating vectors as the concept and covectors as the coconcept.


text: In physics, a vector typically arises as the outcome of a measurement or series of measurements, and is represented as a list (or tuple) of numbers such as


text: The numbers in the list depend on the choice of coordinate system. For instance, if the vector represents position with respect to an observer (position vector), then the coordinate system may be obtained from a system of rigid rods, or reference axes, along which the components "v", "v", and "v" are measured. For a vector to represent a geometric object, it must be possible to describe how it looks in any other coordinate system. That is to say, the components of the vectors will "transform" in a certain way in passing from one coordinate system to another.


text: A "contravariant vector" has components that "transform as the coordinates do" under changes of coordinates (and so inversely to the transformation of the reference axes), including rotation and dilation. The vector itself does not change under these operations; instead, the components of the vector change in a way that cancels the change in the spatial axes, in the same way that coordinates change. In other words, if the reference axes were rotated in one direction, the component representation of the vector would rotate in exactly the opposite way. Similarly, if the reference axes were stretched in one direction, the components of the vector, like the coordinates, would reduce in an exactly compensating way. Mathematically, if the coordinate system undergoes a transformation described by an invertible matrix "M", so that a coordinate vector x is transformed to formula_4, then a contravariant vector v must be similarly transformed via formula_5. This important requirement is what distinguishes a contravariant vector from any other triple of physically meaningful quantities. For example, if "v" consists of the "x"-, "y"-, and "z"-components of velocity, then "v" is a contravariant vector: if the coordinates of space are stretched, rotated, or twisted, then the components of the velocity transform in the same way. Examples of contravariant vectors include position, displacement, velocity, acceleration, momentum, and force.


text: By contrast, a "covariant vector" has components that change oppositely to the coordinates or, equivalently, transform like the reference axes. For instance, the components of the gradient vector of a function


text: The general formulation of covariance and contravariance refer to how the components of a coordinate vector transform under a change of basis (passive transformation). Thus let "V" be a vector space of dimension "n" over a field of scalars "S", and let each of and be a basis of "V". Also, let the change of basis from f to f′ be given by


text: Here, each vector "Y" of the f′ basis is a linear combination of the vectors "X" of the f basis, so that


text: A vector formula_9 in "V" is expressed uniquely as a linear combination of the elements formula_10 of the f basis as


text: where "v"[f] are elements of the field "S" known as the components of "v" in the f basis. Denote the column vector of components of "v" by v[f]:


text: Because the components of the vector "v" transform with the "inverse" of the matrix "A", these components are said to transform contravariantly under a change of basis.


text: The way "A" relates the two pairs is depicted in the following informal diagram using an arrow. The reversal of the arrow indicates a contravariant change:


text: A linear functional "α" on "V" is expressed uniquely in terms of its components (elements in "S") in the f basis as


text: Because the components of the linear functional α transform with the matrix "A", these components are said to transform covariantly under a change of basis.


text: The way "A" relates the two pairs is depicted in the following informal diagram using an arrow. A covariant relationship is indicated since the arrows travel in the same direction:


text: The choice of basis f on the vector space "V" defines uniquely a set of coordinate functions on "V", by means of


text: Conversely, a system of "n" quantities "v" that transform like the coordinates "x" on "V" defines a contravariant vector. A system of "n" quantities that transform oppositely to the coordinates is then a covariant vector.


text: This formulation of contravariance and covariance is often more natural in applications in which there is a coordinate space (a manifold) on which vectors live as tangent vectors or cotangent vectors. Given a local coordinate system "x" on the manifold, the reference axes for the coordinate system are the vector fields


text: then the frame f' is related to the frame f by the inverse of the Jacobian matrix of the coordinate transition:


text: A tangent vector is by definition a vector that is a linear combination of the coordinate partials formula_31. Thus a tangent vector is defined by


text: Such a vector is contravariant with respect to change of frame. Under changes in the coordinate system, one has


text: Accordingly, a system of "n" quantities "v" depending on the coordinates that transform in this way on passing from one coordinate system to another is called a contravariant vector.


text: In a finite-dimensional vector space "V" over a field "K" with a symmetric bilinear form (which may be referred to as the metric tensor), there is little distinction between covariant and contravariant vectors, because the bilinear form allows covectors to be identified with vectors. That is, a vector "v" uniquely determines a covector "α" via


text: for all vectors "w". Conversely, each covector "α" determines a unique vector "v" by this equation. Because of this identification of vectors with covectors, one may speak of the covariant components or contravariant components of a vector, that is, they are just representations of the same vector using the reciprocal basis.


text: The components "v"[f] are the contravariant components of the vector "v" in the basis f, and the components "v"[f] are the covariant components of "v" in the basis f. The terminology is justified because under a change of basis,


text: In the Euclidean plane, the dot product allows for vectors to be identified with covectors. If formula_39 is a basis, then the dual basis formula_40 satisfies


text: Thus, e and e are perpendicular to each other, as are e and e, and the lengths of e and e normalized against e and e, respectively.


text: For example, suppose that we are given a basis e, e consisting of a pair of vectors making a 45° angle with one another, such that e has length 2 and e has length 1. Then the dual basis vectors are given as follows:


text: In the three-dimensional Euclidean space, one can also determine explicitly the dual basis to a given set of basis vectors e, e, e of "E" that are not necessarily assumed to be orthogonal nor of unit norm. The dual basis vectors are:


text: Then the contravariant components of any vector v can be obtained by the dot product of v with the dual basis vectors:


text: Likewise, the covariant components of v can be obtained from the dot product of v with basis vectors, viz.


text: In the field of physics, the adjective covariant is often used informally as a synonym for invariant. For example, the Schrödinger equation does not keep its written form under the coordinate transformations of special relativity. Thus, a physicist might say that the Schrödinger equation is "not covariant". In contrast, the Klein–Gordon equation and the Dirac equation do keep their written form under these coordinate transformations. Thus, a physicist might say that these equations are "covariant".


text: Despite this usage of "covariant", it is more accurate to say that the Klein–Gordon and Dirac equations are invariant, and that the Schrödinger equation is not invariant. Additionally, to remove ambiguity, the transformation by which the invariance is evaluated should be indicated.


text: Because the components of vectors are contravariant and those of covectors are covariant, the vectors themselves are often referred to as being contravariant and the covectors as covariant.


text: The distinction between covariance and contravariance is particularly important for computations with tensors, which often have mixed variance. This means that they have both covariant and contravariant components, or both vector and covector components. The valence of a tensor is the number of variant and covariant terms, and in Einstein notation, covariant components have lower indices, while contravariant components have upper indices. The duality between covariance and contravariance intervenes whenever a vector or tensor quantity is represented by its components, although modern differential geometry uses more sophisticated index-free methods to represent tensors.


text: In tensor analysis, a covariant vector varies more or less reciprocally to a corresponding contravariant vector. Expressions for lengths, areas and volumes of objects in the vector space can then be given in terms of tensors with covariant and contravariant indices. Under simple expansions and contractions of the coordinates, the reciprocity is exact; under affine transformations the components of a vector intermingle on going between covariant and contravariant expression.


text: On a manifold, a tensor field will typically have multiple, upper and lower indices, where Einstein notation is widely used. When the manifold is equipped with a metric, covariant and contravariant indices become very closely related to one another. Contravariant indices can be turned into covariant indices by contracting with the metric tensor. The reverse is possible by contracting with the (matrix) inverse of the metric tensor. Note that in general, no such relation exists in spaces not endowed with a metric tensor. Furthermore, from a more abstract standpoint, a tensor is simply "there" and its components of either kind are only calculational artifacts whose values depend on the chosen coordinates.


text: The explanation in geometric terms is that a general tensor will have contravariant indices as well as covariant indices, because it has parts that live in the tangent bundle as well as the cotangent bundle.


text: A contravariant vector is one which transforms like formula_66, where formula_67 are the coordinates of a particle at its proper time formula_68. A covariant vector is one which transforms like formula_69, where formula_70 is a scalar field.


text: In category theory, there are covariant functors and contravariant functors. The assignment of the dual space to a vector space is a standard example of a contravariant functor. Some constructions of multilinear algebra are of "mixed" variance, which prevents them from being functors.


text: In differential geometry, the components of a vector relative to a basis of the tangent bundle are covariant if they change with the same linear transformation as a change of basis. They are contravariant if they change by the inverse transformation. This is sometimes a source of confusion for two distinct but related reasons. The first is that vectors whose components are covariant (called covectors or 1-forms) actually pull back under smooth functions, meaning that the operation assigning the space of covectors to a smooth manifold is actually a "contravariant" functor. Likewise, vectors whose components are contravariant push forward under smooth mappings, so the operation assigning the space of (contravariant) vectors to a smooth manifold is a "covariant" functor. Secondly, in the classical approach to differential geometry, it is not bases of the tangent bundle that are the most primitive object, but rather changes in the coordinate system. Vectors with contravariant components transform in the same way as changes in the coordinates (because these actually change oppositely to the induced change of basis). Likewise, vectors with covariant components transform in the opposite way as changes in the coordinates.


title: The Elements of Style

text: The Elements of Style is an American English writing style guide in numerous editions. The original was written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, and published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary principles of composition", "a few matters of form", a list of 49 "words and expressions commonly misused", and a list of 57 "words often misspelled". E. B. White greatly enlarged and revised the book for publication by Macmillan in 1959. That was the first edition of the so-called Strunk & White, which "Time" named in 2011 as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923.


title: The Elements of Style

text: Cornell University English professor William Strunk Jr. wrote "The Elements of Style" in 1918 and privately published it in 1919, for use at the university. (Harcourt republished it in 52-page format in 1920.) He and editor Edward A. Tenney later revised it for publication as "The Elements and Practice of Composition" (1935). In 1957 the style guide reached the attention of E.B. White at "The New Yorker". White had studied writing under Strunk in 1919 but had since forgotten "the little book" that he described as a "forty-three-page summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English". Weeks later, White wrote about Strunk's devotion to lucid English prose in his column.


title: The Elements of Style

text: Macmillan and Company subsequently commissioned White to revise "The Elements" for a 1959 edition (Strunk had died in 1946). White's expansion and modernization of Strunk and Tenney's 1935 revised edition yielded the writing style manual informally known as "Strunk & White", the first edition of which sold about two million copies in 1959. More than ten million copies of three editions were later sold. Mark Garvey relates the history of the book in "Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style" (2009).


title: The Elements of Style

text: Maira Kalman, who provided the illustrations for "The Elements of Style Illustrated" (2005, see below), asked Nico Muhly to compose a cantata based on the book. It was performed at the New York Public Library in October 2005.


title: The Elements of Style

text: Audiobook versions of "The Elements" now feature changed wording, citing "gender issues" with the original.


title: The Elements of Style

text: Strunk concentrated on the cultivation of good writing and composition; the original 1918 edition exhorted writers to "omit needless words", use the active voice, and employ parallelism appropriately.


title: The Elements of Style

text: The 1959 edition features White's expansions of preliminary sections, the "Introduction" essay (derived from his magazine story about Strunk), and the concluding chapter, "An Approach to Style", a broader, prescriptive guide to writing in English. He also produced the second (1972) and third (1979) editions of "The Elements of Style", by which time the book's length had extended to 85 pages.


title: The Elements of Style

text: The third edition of "The Elements of Style" (1979) features 54 points: a list of common word-usage errors; 11 rules of punctuation and grammar; 11 principles of writing; 11 matters of form; and, in Chapter V, 21 reminders for better style. The final reminder, the 21st, "Prefer the standard to the offbeat", is thematically integral to the subject of "The Elements of Style", yet does stand as a discrete essay about writing lucid prose. To write well, White advises writers to have the proper mind-set, that they write to please themselves, and that they aim for "one moment of felicity", a phrase by Robert Louis Stevenson. Thus Strunk's 1918 recommendation:


title: The Elements of Style

text: Strunk Jr. no longer has a comma in his name in the 1979 and later editions, due to the modernized style recommendation about punctuating such names.


title: The Elements of Style

text: The fourth edition of "The Elements of Style" (2000), published 54 years after Strunk's death, omits his stylistic advice about masculine pronouns: "unless the antecedent is or must be feminine". In its place, the following sentence has been added: "many writers find the use of the generic "he" or "his" to rename indefinite antecedents limiting or offensive." Further, the re-titled entry "They. He or She", in Chapter IV: Misused Words and Expressions, advises the writer to avoid an "unintentional emphasis on the masculine".


title: The Elements of Style

text: Components new to the fourth edition include a foreword by Roger Angell, stepson of E. B. White, an afterword by the American cultural commentator Charles Osgood, a glossary, and an index. Five years later, the fourth edition text was re-published as "The Elements of Style Illustrated" (2005), with illustrations by the designer Maira Kalman. This edition excludes the afterword by Osgood and restores the first edition chapter on spelling.


title: The Elements of Style

text: "The Elements of Style" was listed as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923 by "Time" in its 2011 list. Upon its release, Charles Poor, writing for "The New York Times", called it "a splendid trophy for all who are interested in reading and writing." American poet Dorothy Parker has, regarding the book, said:If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of "The Elements of Style". The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy.


title: The Elements of Style

text: Criticism of "Strunk & White" has largely focused on claims that it has a prescriptivist nature, or that it has become a general anachronism in the face of modern English usage.


title: The Elements of Style

text: In criticizing "The Elements of Style", Geoffrey Pullum, professor of linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, and co-author of "The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language" (2002), said that:


title: The Elements of Style

text: Pullum has argued, for example, that the authors misunderstood what constitutes the passive voice, and he criticized their proscription of established and unproblematic English usages, such as the split infinitive and the use of "which" in a restrictive relative clause. On "Language Log", a blog about language written by linguists, he further criticized "The Elements of Style" for promoting linguistic prescriptivism and hypercorrection among Anglophones, and called it "the book that ate America's brain".


title: The Elements of Style

text: "The Boston Globe" review described "The Elements of Style Illustrated" (2005), with illustrations by Maira Kalman, as an "aging zombie of a book ... a hodgepodge, its now-antiquated pet peeves jostling for space with 1970s taboos and 1990s computer advice".


title: The Elements of Style

text: Nevertheless, many contemporary authors still recommend it highly. Their praise tends to focus on its characterization of good writing and how to achieve it, grammar being just one element of that purpose. In "" (2000, p. 11), Stephen King writes: "There is little or no detectable bullshit in that book. (Of course, it's short; at eighty-five pages it's much shorter than this one.) I'll tell you right now that every aspiring writer should read "The Elements of Style". Rule 17 in the chapter titled Principles of Composition is 'Omit needless words.' I will try to do that here."


title: The Elements of Style

text: In 2011, Tim Skern remarked that "The Elements of Style" "remains the best book available on writing good English".


title: The Elements of Style

text: In 2013, Nevile Gwynne reproduced "The Elements of Style" in his work "Gwynne's Grammar". Britt Peterson of the "Boston Globe" wrote that his inclusion of the book was a "curious addition".


title: The Elements of Style

text: In 2016, the Open Syllabus Project lists "The Elements of Style" as the most frequently assigned text in US academic syllabuses, based on an analysis of 933,635 texts appearing in over 1 million syllabuses.


title: United States Space Command

text: United States Space Command (USSPACECOM or SPACECOM) is a unified combatant command of the United States Department of Defense, responsible for military operations in outer space, specifically all operations 100 kilometers (62 miles) and greater above mean sea level. U.S. Space Command is responsible for the operational employment of space forces that are provided by the uniformed services of the Department of Defense.


title: United States Space Command

text: Space Command was originally created in September 1985 to provide joint command and control for all military forces in outer space and coordinate with the other combatant commands. SPACECOM was disestablished in 2002, and its responsibilities and forces were merged into United States Strategic Command. A second incarnation of Space Command was established on 29 August 2019, with a reemphasized focus on space as a warfighting domain.


title: United States Space Command

text: Space Command's mission is: ""To conduct operations in, from, and through space to deter conflict, and if necessary, defeat aggression, deliver space combat power for the Joint/Combined force, and defend U.S. vital interests with allies and partners.""


title: United States Space Command

text: United States Space Command has two subordinate components. The Combined Force Space Component Command (CFSCC) is responsible for planning and conducting global space operations, while also providing space effects to the other combatant commands and U.S. allied partners. Joint Task Force–Space Defense (JTF-SD) is responsible for conducting space superiority operations.


title: United States Space Command

text: On 16 November 2022 Combined Force Space Component Command and Joint Task Force–Space Defense will now report to the Combined Joint Task Force–Space Operations (CJTF-SO), a three-star subcommand of Space Command (the combatant command). JTF-SD continues to coordinate with the Intelligence Community through the National Space Defense Center. CFSCC continues to support the GPS operations and communications. CJTF-SO coordinates Space Command's Unified Command Plan.


title: United States Space Command

text: As a unified combatant command, Space Command has a number of service components that provide forces to it.


title: United States Space Command

text: United States Space Command is the unified combatant command for all military space operations, while the United States Space Force is the military service responsible for organizing, training, and equipping the majority of forces for U.S. Space Command. Space Command's Space Force service component is Space Operations Command, providing the majority of space forces. U.S. Space Command also consists of smaller amounts of forces from the United States Army, United States Marine Corps, United States Navy, and United States Air Force. This mirrors the relationship between the Space Force's predecessor, Air Force Space Command, and U.S. Space Command (and between 2002 and 2019, United States Strategic Command).


title: United States Space Command

text: United States Space Command was established as a functional combatant command in 1985 to provide joint command and control of the Air Force, Army, and Navy's space forces, as well as prepare for the implementation of the Strategic Defense Initiative.


title: United States Space Command

text: In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the armed forces' focus on homeland defense and counter-terrorism was significantly increased, which resulted in space being deemphasized. It was in this context that the unified command plan was reevaluated, resulting in U.S. Northern Command being established for the defense of the North American continent, while U.S. Space Command was merged with U.S. Strategic Command, where its responsibilities were absorbed into the Joint Functional Component Command for Space and Global Strike. In 2006, this would be replaced by the Joint Functional Component Command for Space, and in 2017, be reorganized as the Joint Force Space Component Commander.


title: United States Space Command

text: The Army components for the first formation of Space Command were the Army Space Agency (1986–1988); Army Space Command (1988–1992); and Army Space and Strategic Defense Command (1992–1997), which eventually became today's Army Space and Missile Defense Command. Up until 2002 Naval Space Command was the naval component, and Air Force Space Command the USAF component.


title: United States Space Command

text: The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which was signed into law in 2018, directed the re-establishment of U.S. Space Command as a sub-unified combatant command under U.S. Strategic Command; however, in December 2018, the Trump administration directed that U.S. Space Command instead be a newly established, full unified combatant command, with full responsibilities for space warfighting, which at the time, was under the authority of U.S. Strategic Command.


title: United States Space Command

text: On March 26, 2019, U.S. Air Force General John Raymond was nominated to be the commander of the second establishment of USSPACECOM, pending Senate approval. In 2019 the Department of the Air Force released the list of finalists for the Headquarters of Space Command: Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, Schriever Air Force Base, Peterson Air Force Base, Buckley Air Force Base, Vandenberg Air Force Base, and Redstone Arsenal. U.S. Space Command was officially reestablished on August 29, 2019, during a ceremony at the White House. The former Joint Force Space Component Commander was dissolved and folded into Space Command. Following the creation of the United States Space Force in December 2019, the Department of the Air Force widened its search for a location of Space Command's permanent headquarters.


title: United States Space Command

text: USSPACECOM has two subordinate commands: Combined Force Space Component Command (CFSCC), and Joint Task Force Space Defense (JTF-SD). CFSCC plans, integrates, conducts, and assesses global space operations in order to deliver combat relevant space capabilities to Combatant Commanders, Coalition partners, the Joint Force, and the Nation. JTF-SD conducts, in unified action with mission partners, space superiority operations to deter aggression, defend U.S. and allied interests, and defeat adversaries throughout the continuum of conflict.


title: United States Space Command

text: In August 2020, In the meeting of the National Space Council, acting Director of National Intelligence announced <nowiki>"in case of an attack on the U.S. satellites the operational control of intelligence community assets will be in the ambit of the military"</nowiki>, resulting in the National Reconnaissance Office being operationally subordinated to the commander of U.S. Space Command in matters of space defense.


title: United States Space Command

text: In January 2021, it was announced that Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama was the preferred final location for U.S. Space Command. The other locations in contention were Kirtland Air Force Base, Offutt Air Force Base, Joint Base San Antonio, its interim location at Peterson Air Force Base, and Patrick Space Force Base. Despite Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, being both the original and interim location of Space Command headquarters, Redstone Arsenal was selected, reportedly due to political pressure directly from then-president Donald Trump. A formal review from the DoD IG was initiated to ensure the process that selected Huntsville as the preferred location was impartial and factually sound. Current Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin came out with his public support and backed the Department of the Air Force's decision process which resulted in the selection of Redstone Arsenal. In May 2022, the review found that the selection of Redstone Arsenal as the permanent site was reasonable and justified.


title: United States Space Command

text: On 24 August 2021, two years after its establishment, U.S. Space Command announced that it had reached initial operating capability. Achieving full operating capability, according to Lieutenant General John E. Shaw, deputy commander of U.S. Space Command, is dependent on the selection of the combatant command's permanent headquarters.


title: United States Space Command

text: U.S. Space Command is planning to reorganize its subordinate commands, possibly reactivating the Joint Force Space Component Command (JFSCC), the precursor organization of the combatant command. JFSSC is planned to be the combatant command's "primary warfighting command," formed by combining CFSCC and JTF–SD. Space Force Lieutenant General Stephen Whiting, commander of SpOC, is planned to lead the new organization.


title: United States Space Command

text: One of the stated objectives of the US Space Command is to ensure, through Space domain awareness (SDA), the survivability of US satellites orbiting in space and to provide lethal force, if necessary, to counter the malign space capabilities of an adversary.


title: United States Space Command

text: Note: The numeric order of the commanders were reset due to the second establishment being considered a different command than the first.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II is an action-adventure platform video game developed and published by LucasArts. It is the second installment of , and the sequel to "" (2008). The game was released in the United States on October 26, 2010, and throughout Europe on October 29 for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii consoles, as well as Windows and the Nintendo DS and iOS portable devices.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: The game takes place approximately six months after the events of the first game, and a year before the film "A New Hope". "The Force Unleashed II" is described as the "dark entry" in the series, and a more personal story for the game's protagonist than the first game. Players control a clone of Starkiller, the first game's protagonist and Darth Vader's secret apprentice who sacrificed himself after helping to form the Rebel Alliance. Vader's attempts to breed a perfect apprentice from the original Starkiller's DNA leads to the creation of the clone who, possessing his predecessor's memories and realizing he will similarly be betrayed, escapes Vader. While on a quest across the galaxy to understand his identity and escape from Vader's influence, Starkiller becomes caught in the war between the Alliance and the Galactic Empire.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: Production for "The Force Unleashed II" transpired over an approximate period of nine months; while it possesses some similarities to the previous game, producers modified several aspects such as the sound effects and gameplay. Sam Witwer again provides the voice and likeness for Starkiller, and several cast members return to voice and provide likeness to their respective roles.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: "The Force Unleashed II" received mixed reviews from critics who praised the graphics and sound design, but criticized the repetitive gameplay, short length, and underwhelming story. During the first few weeks after its release it placed fifth or higher in sales for several regions. A sequel, entitled "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed III", was planned, but it was ultimately scrapped following Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012. As a result of the acquisition, "The Force Unleashed" project became part of the non-canonical "Star Wars" Expanded Universe (also known as "Star Wars Legends") and never received a proper conclusion.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: "The Force Unleashed II" is a third-person action game in which the player's character's weapons are the Force and a lightsaber. The game has a combo system for stringing lightsaber attacks and for combining lightsaber attacks with Force powers. Like the original "Force Unleashed", experience points earned by killing enemies and finding artifacts can be used to increase Starkiller's powers and traits.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: "The Force Unleashed II" refines gameplay elements from the first "Force Unleashed", and adds more variety with such features as puzzle solving. Combat was modified to include the ability to wield dual lightsabers, which can dismember or decapitate enemies. The game also adds more Force powers, such as "Mind Trick" and "Force Rage".


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: According to lead producer Vinde Kudirka, the goal of the game across all platforms is to make the player feel like "a super-powerful Jedi". Executive producer Julio Torres said that while the story is consistent across platforms, gameplay decreases in style across platforms to reflect each platform's uniqueness and strengths. The Wii's control scheme is focused on being able to precisely control Starkiller's Force powers and saber combos. The Wii exclusive "Force rage" power puts the game's protagonist, Starkiller, into a bullet time mode exclusive to that platform; the Wii version also has a Force sight power not included on other platforms. The Wii version also has a multiplayer mode, inspired by "The Outfoxies", in which four players can challenge each other in a fighting-style combat game. The Wii game also has an extra story-based level, on Dagobah, that is not present in the HD version of the game, making the plot of the Wii game slightly different from the HD version.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: The PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 versions feature new Force powers, new skins for Force powers that appear in "The Force Unleashed", an improved rendering system providing richer colors, and a new audio system. The gameplay also highlights the potential to "destroy" the game environment. Neither of the PC, PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 versions of the game include multiplayer. The Nintendo DS version features the same Force powers as the console versions, but was designed for shorter play sessions due to its mobile nature.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: At an Imperial facility on the planet Kamino, Darth Vader observes the training of a clone of his former apprentice Starkiller. The clone experiences various memories and visions of Starkiller's life, and is unable to strike down a droid impersonating Starkiller's love interest, Juno Eclipse. Vader labels the clone a failure in his quest to create a perfect apprentice, and the clone remembers Vader's betrayal of Starkiller; realizing Vader will try to have him killed as well, he makes his escape. Stealing Vader's tie fighter, the clone leaves in an attempt to understand his identity and escape Vader's influence. Meanwhile, Vader hires the bounty hunter Boba Fett to capture Juno Eclipse to lure the clone back to him.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: Starkiller arrives on the Imperial-controlled planet Cato Neimoidia to rescue Rahm Kota, the original Starkiller's blind Jedi mentor, who is being forced to fight in a gladiatorial arena by the planet's ruler, Baron Merillion Tarko. Tarko quickly becomes distrustful of Starkiller and orders his men to kill him. Starkiller fights his way through the Imperial forces to reach Kota, where Tarko unleashes a gargantuan beast, the Gorog, to kill both men. The Gorog escapes its restraints and destroys the arena, eating Tarko and grabbing Kota before falling off the platform. Starkiller kills the Gorog in free-fall and saves Kota, while the latter calls in the "Rogue Shadow", the original Starkiller's ship, to rescue the pair.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: Despite the clone's insistence that he is not the real Starkiller and wants nothing to do with the war, Kota asserts that Jedi can't be cloned and invites him to join the Rebel Alliance. Declining, Starkiller drops Kota off at the nearest spaceport and travels to Dagobah, where he meets Jedi Grandmaster Yoda and enters a cave that is strong with the Dark Side. Starkiller sees a vision of Juno in peril aboard her medical frigate "Salvation", and leaves to rescue her.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: Starkiller boards the "Salvation" with Kota, who reveals that the Rebel Alliance has continued to grow in his absence but that it’s leadership has become reluctant to attack any major Imperial targets out of fear that their fleet will be destroyed and provides the General with information that could help the Alliance take Kamino. The ship soon come under attack and both Jedi race to the bridge only to find Juno missing. The original Starkiller's training droid PROXY reveals that experimental Imperial forces led by Fett have infiltrated the ship and captured Juno. Starkiller locates Juno but is too late to stop Fett leaving with her and realizes Vader's plot to lure him back to Kamino.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: After eliminating the Imperial forces aboard the "Salvation", Starkiller convinces Kota to order an all-out assault of Kamino. The Rebels arrive at Kamino but are met by the Imperial fleet, who have activated a defensive shield around the planet. Starkiller tells Kota to order an evacuation and crashes the "Salvation" through the shield. While Kota and his men stage a ground assault, Starkiller confronts Vader, who reveals and commands numerous failed Starkiller clones. Starkiller eliminates the clones and battles Vader to a stalemate. Vader reveals a detained Juno, threatening her life to force Starkiller to surrender and orders him to kill the rebels. Juno attempts to attack Vader with Starkiller's discarded lightsaber, but Vader uses the Force to hurl her out a window onto the ground below, seemingly killing her. Enraged, Starkiller unleashes the full extent of his powers to defeat Vader, subduing him with force lightning just as Kota and his men arrive. Vader tries to goad Starkiller into killing him, but Kota reasons that they need him alive to reveal the Empire's secrets before he can be placed on trial and executed. At this point, the player is given the choice between sparing Vader (Light Side) or killing him (Dark Side).


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: A downloadable content (DLC) level was released in December 2010, providing a continuation of the non-canonical Dark Side ending of the game, with the dark Starkiller clone depicted in said ending as the protagonist. The level is set in a different timeline from any other pieces of "Star Wars" media, including the first game's own dark alternate timeline depicted in its expansions.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: The level takes place during an alternate depiction of "Return of the Jedi", primarily the Battle of Endor, where the remnants of the Rebel Alliance lead a desperate attack on the Empire's new battle station, the Death Star II. Darth Vader's trusted apprentice, the dark Starkiller clone, arrives on Endor with special orders to eliminate the Alliance's remaining leaders. Slaughtering numerous Ewoks and Rebel soldiers in his path, he arrives at the shield generator protecting the Death Star, where he kills Han Solo and Chewbacca. The dark apprentice then confronts Princess Leia Organa, who has been training as a Jedi after her brother Luke Skywalkers death on Hoth to fulfill his failed destiny of restoring balance to the Force. Following a fierce duel, the dark apprentice slays Leia. Aboard the Death Star, the Emperor declares the Rebel Alliance defeated, then subdues Vader with Force lightning while chastising him for resurrecting his failed apprentice as a clone, claiming he knew of Vader's plans to overthrow him using the clone from their inception. Deeming the clone too powerful to be kept alive, the Emperor orders his forces to kill him. As the dark apprentice meditates near Leia's corpse, he senses Star Destroyers nearby.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: Following the commercial success of its predecessor, a sequel was formally announced at the Spike Video Game Awards. The game was released for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii consoles, as well as the Nintendo DS and iOS portable devices. A version was initially developed for the PlayStation Portable, but was cancelled for undisclosed reasons. "The Force Unleashed II" was released in North America on October 26, 2010, and in Europe on October 29, 2010.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: Haden Blackman served as a writer for the sequel, and was only given a mere 3 weeks by Lucasarts to write the game's script. In crafting the dialogue of "The Force Unleashed II", Blackman sought influence from "Darksiders" (2010), as well as other video games such as "" (2009) and "Heavy Rain" (2010). In the wake the early stages of conceiving "The Force Unleashed II", the main protagonist Starkiller was initially intended to be replaced with a new lead character, but such plans never materialized as LucasArts opted to develop more backstory for the character. As the character progression of Starkiller initiates, the story follows a dark nature—much like its predecessor. Blackman suggested that as opposed to his empathic tendencies in "The Force Unleashed", Starkiller becomes conflicted with his loss of an identity, ultimately culminating into what he called a "much more personal story"; "He's dealing with a sense of identity and not knowing whether he's going insane or not," he added, "and the possible collapse of the Rebel Alliance, and his being torn between what he wants and what Kota wants." Blackman's main objective was to have the storyline be attractive to a broad audience; while he asserted that fans with a general understanding of the "Star Wars" franchise would be more enthralled with the storyline, Blackman emphasized the need to appeal to a more mainstream demographic. "With "The Force Unleashed II" again we're trying to create a story that if you’ve played "The Force Unleashed"," explained the comic book writer, "you're going to know a bit more going into it, but hopefully the story still stands on its own and you can enjoy it even if you haven't played [the first game], whether or not you're familiar with all the continuity."


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: To avoid any perceived continuity constraints, they would travel to the headquarters of Lucasfilm in San Francisco, California to give an overview of their plans. "With "The Force Unleashed II", remarked Blackman, "because we’d already established this notion of Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, really it was just sitting down with licensing and saying ‘this is what we want to do’ and getting a few pieces of feedback from them."


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: The primary cast from the previous game returns to voice their characters again in "The Force Unleashed II". Sam Witwer returns to provide both the likeness and voice of Starkiller, the game's protagonist. He also voices Emperor Palpatine having earned the part during a read-through of the script during development. Witwer petitioned David Collins, voice of PR0XY and audio lead for the game. He told Collins that "if [he was not] going to get Ian McDiarmid to do this [...] I'll do it." Actress and model Nathalie Cox reprises her role as Juno Eclipse, as does Cully Fredrickson as General Rahm Kota. Matt Sloan, who portrays Darth Vader in the webseries and voices Vader in the original "The Force Unleashed" returns to the role in "The Force Unleashed II". Veteran "" voice actors Tom Kane and Dee Bradley Baker are also included amongst the cast. Kane voices Jedi Master Yoda, a role he has provided several times within the Star Wars franchise. Baker voices bounty hunter Boba Fett, a clone and adopted son of Jango Fett. Baker provides the voice of all of the clone troopers in the "Clone Wars" series, of which Boba is one.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: "The Force Unleashed II" derives from LucasArts' Ronin 2.0 game engine, an update to a similarly named proprietary game engine used by its predecessor. Like "The Force Unleashed", the game integrates three third-party technologies: Havok for varying types of body physics such as ragdoll animation, NaturalMotion's Euphoria for realistic non-player character artificial intelligence, and Digital Molecular Matter for dynamic destructible objects. Blackman felt the second game takes better advantage of the powerful engine than does the first game. LucasArts acknowledged players' frustration with the first game's targeting system, and worked to revise it in the sequel; Blackman said fixing the Force grip feature was the developers' top priority. The game also includes fewer enemy types, instead focusing on making enemies more "'special and unique'"; the game was also designed to offer "epic" boss battles. Other adjustments include allowing players to dismember enemy characters and improving menu speeds.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: The audio engine received a massive overhaul to upgrade the quality of sound effects. Brian Tibbetts was declared the lead sound designer of the sound effects team, resuming his endeavors from "The Force Unleashed". David Collins, who formerly served as the lead sound designer, sustained a supervisory position. The sound effects team was divided to address specific details; Tom Bible was in charge of creating sound for weapons and force powers, while Aaron Brown specialized in the spaceships. Although some effects were borrowed from "The Force Unleashed", the vast majority of sounds were completely new. Tibbetts thought that collaborating with his peers to be one of the most complex and challenging parts of his job. "I chose to have my office in the main area of game development and always had an open door policy regarding communication with other disciplines. There were many meetings regarding asset changes and in general communication at Lucasarts is good between disciplines. I’ve always stressed that we should work together as much as possible and there were many moments of myself and sound designers working directly with designers, artists, and producers at their desks or ours."


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: The nine-month schedule of "The Force Unleashed II" caused difficulties with Tibbetts, who found it frustrating to keep up with the frenetic schedule. "There are many different ways to integrate our audio assets including scripting or placing sound emitters directly inside environment art and our work was unfortunately blown out many times," he stated. As production neared its conclusion, Tibbets created an emailing system with a group of engineers that would notify them after audio reference was edited. According to Tibbetts, "This helped a lot especially as the responsible parties didn’t realize or intend to blow us out and were more than happy to help resolve the situation. By the time this tool was built though, we had already had to re-author/integrate excessively though which is always frustrating."


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: Dmitry Andreev devised a framing system that gave the illusion of operating at 60 frames per second (FPS), despite running at 30FPS. To familiarize himself with the process, Andreev observed various 120 Hz television sets that incorporated two frames in producing an intermediate image, resulting in a smoother and clearer picture. The design team utilized a variety of interpolation techniques on multiple parts of an image, such as transparency and reflection. Andreev stated that "as soon as I got back home, I started to play with it and soon after that realised that there are a lot of issues. Mostly the artifacts of a different kind, that appear in more or less complex scenes, as well as performance issues [...]." In response to the difficulties, he constructed a prototype that performed several enhancement techniques which examined images for vectors that demonstrated how "elements of the image would move from one frame to the next". The LucasArts coder realized that such processes could be repackaged for a different use. "We already know how things are moving as we have full control over them. This way we don't need to do any kind of estimation," he professed.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: Interpolating the graphics in 30FPS was opted due to the large variety of rendering technologies that were practical to developers, as well as a less stringent time schedule. Although Andreev felt that it was not impossible to produce a video game in 60FPS graphics, he felt that it would require much more rigorous efforts on art, engineering, and design. "It is fair to say that in a lot of cases," he explained, "during pre-production, studios try to see what it would take to make a 60FPS game. Then, they get something that doesn't look very pretty when running at 60, realising that all the art has to be produced very carefully as well as level and game design."


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: "The Force Unleashed II" performed under expectations. In the United States, it sold 500,000 copies within its first two weeks, thereby becoming the fifth best-selling video game of October 2010. "The Force Unleashed II" was the fifth-highest selling game of the week in the United Kingdom, denoting sales of 56,064 copies. In Sweden, "The Force Unleashed II" was the third best-selling overall game of the week; the PlayStation 3 version of the game topped its respective chart, while the Xbox 360 version trailed behind "Fable 3" as the second-best selling Xbox 360 game of the week.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: Commentators were divided on "The Force Unleashed II". "The Observer" columnist Toby Moses avouched that the game failed to live up to the expectations established by its predecessor. Alexander Sliwinski of Joystiq derided it as a "desperate cash grab", which had no intentions of aspiring to be a "major part of lore or to be nearly as epic" as "The Force Unleashed". "It simply cobbles together glorified fan fiction for what amounts to an unexceptional subplot as it abruptly ends in the second act screaming, 'SEQUEL GOES HERE'," remarked Sliwinski. Despite proclaiming that "The Force Unleashed II" had "dazzling" gameplay, "The Washington Times" journalist Joseph Szadkowski concluded that it was "one of the most underachieving games of the year". In his 6.5 out of 10 rating review, Anthony Gallegos of IGN stated that "The Force Unleashed II" immediately captivates the audience with its visuals, albeit being plagued with repetitious gameplay, a "shoe-horned in story", and a nonexistent depth "in the experience". "Scenery is, of course, massive and massively impressive, and the possible repetitive nature has been broken up with some freefalling levels and the odd exploratory moment," commented Neil Davey of "The Guardian", who issued the game a four out of five stars.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: "Game Informer" Andrew Reiner said the game's mechanics are more fluid than the first game's, and praised the textures and animations as "among this generation's best". "GamePro"s Mitch Dyer and Matthew Keast of GamesRadar highlighted the game's variety of lightsaber crystals and their ability to boost Starkiller's powers. Keast observed that LucasArts seemed to take player feedback from the first game seriously, and made numerous subtle improvements for the sequel. He also praised "substantial" improvements to the Force grip power, although Alexander Sliwinski of "Eurogamer" did not detect any improvements. The Writers Guild of America nominated the game for its Outstanding Achievement in Video Game Writing recognition.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: John Teti of "Eurogamer" said the game overall "feels like it was created out of obligation rather than inspiration", and points toward Blackman's departure from LucasArts before the game's release as a potential sign of trouble. IGN's Anthony Gallegos criticized the game's repetitive level design and underdeveloped story. He also felt that because Starkiller begins the game as a powerful character, leveling up does not feel as satisfying as in the first game; while the game does offer increased variety in enemy types that "occasionally present a challenge", defeating them eventually becomes formulaic. Andrew Reiner of "Game Informer" criticized the story and the dissatisfying appearances by Boba Fett and Yoda. GameSpot's Kevin VanOrd called the final battle repetitive, and that the game's end sequence erases the story's dramatic tension. "The Force Unleashed II" was later one of GameSpot's nominees for "Least Improved Sequel of 2010". "GamePro" Mitch Dyer faulted several performance issues and the game's brief, unfocused story. The downloadable content was poorly received by Luke Plunkett of Kotaku, who criticized the murder of Han Solo and Chewbacca depicted in the expansion.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: "Nintendo Power" praised the Wii version's multiplayer mode, as did Lucas M. Thomas of IGN. GameSpot's Kevin VanOrd was more critical of the multiplayer, calling it "unspectacular". VanOrd did go on to praise the game's art, combat, and control scheme.


title: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

text: In 2013, Sam Witwer and Haden Blackman stated during an interview in February 2013 that Lucasfilm was considering the development of "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed III" for the next generation video game consoles PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Wii U. However, after LucasArts was closed by The Walt Disney Company due to the purchase of Lucasfilm, "The Force Unleashed III" was cancelled among other planned "Star Wars" video games, like "Star Wars 1313". In November 2015, one month before the release of "", Blackman revealed that "The Force Unleashed III" would have been more open-world and seen Starkiller and Darth Vader team-up to fight a new threat from Emperor Palpatine.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: Damon Lamon Stoudamire (born September 3, 1973) is an American professional basketball coach and former player who is currently an assistant coach for the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association (NBA) The , point guard was selected with the 7th overall pick by the Toronto Raptors in the 1995 NBA draft and won the 1995–96 NBA Rookie of the Year Award. He played collegiately at the University of Arizona, and professionally for the Toronto Raptors, Portland Trail Blazers, Memphis Grizzlies and San Antonio Spurs.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: Stoudamire was born to Willie Stoudamire and Liz Washington in Portland, Oregon; he was the only child, with three stepsisters; his parents never married. Willie Stoudamire moved away to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to work in a brewery when Damon was seven years old. Stoudamire was raised by his mother, Liz, and his grandmother, Wanda Stoudamire-Matthews.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: While Stoudamire was growing up, his uncles, Charles and Anthony Stoudamire, got him involved in sports, mainly basketball and football. They acted as fathers and personal coaches to Stoudamire in his younger years, as he grew up watching his favorite player, Nate Archibald, and attempted to pattern his game after his childhood hero. As he grew older, Stoudamire began to play basketball at Irving Park in the Portland–Irvington neighborhood and at the Matt Dishman Community Center in Portland.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: Stoudamire attended Holy Redeemer grade school (a Catholic school) and Harriet Tubman Middle School, then attended Woodrow Wilson High School. During his junior year in high school, his grandmother Wanda died of cancer. He would later tattoo Wanda's face and her address on his left arm in remembrance. He was expected to attend and play basketball at Oregon, but chose to attend Arizona instead.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: Stoudamire attended Wilson High School, now Ida B. Wells-Barnett High School, playing there for the Trojans, where he led his team to a 74–4 record and state championships in 1989 and 1991. He averaged 26.1 points, 9.2 assists, and 3.6 rebounds per game while playing for his school. He earned two Oregon Player of the Year and one Converse High School All-American awards during his senior year.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: Stoudamire played point guard for the Arizona Wildcats and coach, Lute Olson. He was a first-team All-American and finalist for College Player of the Year. He teamed with Khalid Reeves his junior year to lead the team to the Final Four. During his senior year he earned the All-American honors for his 22.8 points per game. He also finished his college career first on the Wildcats' all-time list in three-pointers made (272), second in points (1,849), fourth in assists (663), and was the only player in Arizona history to have two 40-point games. Stoudamire scored his career-high 45 points at Stanford University on January 14, 1995. He was named a 1995 Wooden Award finalist after sharing the Pac-10 Player of the Year award with Ed O'Bannon.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: Despite being the youngest player on the roster of the United States men's national basketball team, Stoudamire led the team in assists and steals en route to a gold medal at the 1993 Summer Universiade.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: Stoudamire made an impact with the Raptors before he ever set foot on the court for them. At the 1995 NBA Draft held in Toronto, the fans in attendance chanted loudly for the Raptors to select UCLA standout Ed O'Bannon with their first ever draft pick, loudly booing when the team announced their first pick would be Stoudamire instead. Years later, Stoudamire would tell MacLean's that the boos did not bother him, being extra motivation for him, with the fans turning around on him once they saw him play for the first time. Stoudamire would go on to a noteworthy rookie season with the Raptors, averaging 9.3 assists and 19 points per game. He earned the nickname "Mighty Mouse" because he stands only , and because he had a Mighty Mouse tattoo on his right arm going into his rookie season. He set the record for three-point field goals made by a rookie with 133 breaking the record at the time held by Dennis Scott. This record has been broken several times over since Stoudamire's 133 mark. It is currently held by Donovan Mitchell, who made 187 threes in his rookie season. Stoudamire is third in assist average by a rookie. He ranked second in scoring among all rookies in 1995–96, and led all rookies in minutes played and assists. He received the Schick Rookie of the Month award twice and unanimously made the Schick All Rookie First Team, and eventually won the Rookie of the Year award, receiving 76 of the possible 113 votes, and the MVP award of the Rookie All-Star Game. He holds the record for being the third-lowest draft pick (7th overall) to ever win the Rookie of the Year award, with the lowest being Malcolm Brogdon (36th in the second round.) He is also known as the shortest player to ever win this award. He did not play the last 10 games of his rookie season due to tendinitis in his left knee. The Raptors finished that year and his rookie season with 21 wins and 61 losses.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: Stoudamire previously held the record for most triple doubles with the Toronto Raptors with 3 triple doubles, a record that stood until 2014, when it was broken by Kyle Lowry.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: On February 13, 1998, he was traded by the Raptors along with Walt Williams and Carlos Rogers to the Portland Trail Blazers in exchange for Kenny Anderson, Alvin Williams, Gary Trent, two first-round draft picks, a second-round draft pick and cash considerations. As a member of the Blazers, his stats fell somewhat from his career highs. In the 2002–03 season, the Blazers benched Stoudamire for most of the time. The new head coach, Maurice Cheeks, went with Scottie Pippen and Bonzi Wells instead at the guard positions. However, Stoudamire received significant playing time in the playoffs that season.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: On January 14, 2005, Stoudamire hit a career-high and Blazers franchise record 54 points, which included 8 3-pointers, against the New Orleans Hornets. The same season, on April 15, he shot an NBA record 21 3-point attempts, making only 5 of them.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: Stoudamire's contract with the Blazers expired at the end of the 2004–05 season, and it became widely known that the Blazers, who were focusing on youth movement and looking for players with good character, had no intention of re-signing him. This became abundantly clear in August 2005, when the team signed free agent guard Juan Dixon to a contract, and assigned him Stoudamire's uniform number (3). Stoudamire wanted the Blazers to work out a sign-and-trade deal whereby he would end up with the Houston Rockets, but since this would have required Portland to take one of Houston's overpaid players in return and the team, at that time, had a relatively high payroll, Portland management decided to go in another direction with players like Travis Outlaw and Sebastian Telfair.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: On August 5, 2005, after Stoudamire had been in discussions with several teams, it was announced he signed a 4-year deal with the Memphis Grizzlies, where he replaced Jason Williams, who left for the Miami Heat, as the starting point guard. On December 30, 2005, he tore his right patellar tendon, coincidentally in his hometown of Portland. He was carted off the court, and had successful surgery in Birmingham, Alabama the following week. He missed the rest of the 2005–06 season, returning for 2006–07, and ended up playing 62 games, of which he started 51 (evenly splitting point guard duties with veteran backup Chucky Atkins).


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: During the 2007–08 season, on NBA Access with Ahmad Rashad, he said that he was working hard with Mike Conley, Jr., a 2007 draft pick by the Grizzlies, who, after Stoudamire had left, would play a major role as a point guard. When Conley returned from an injury, Grizzlies head coach Marc Iavaroni placed Stoudamire on the inactive list and used inexperienced rookie Mike Conley Jr. as the starting point guard, causing Stoudamire to look for a trade or a buyout. On January 26, 2008, the Grizzlies reached a tentative contractual buyout agreement with Stoudamire, with the San Antonio Spurs, Boston Celtics, Phoenix Suns, Denver Nuggets and Toronto Raptors registering strong interest in signing him. On January 28, the buyout was completed and Stoudamire was placed on waivers. The Celtics initially showed strong interest in Stoudamire but since set their sights on the LA Clippers' Sam Cassell. According to Stoudamire's agent, Stoudamire was to sign with the Spurs.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: On February 3, 2008, Stoudamire signed a contract with the San Antonio Spurs. He briefly started for the Spurs while Tony Parker was injured, but then was relegated to spot duty throughout the rest of the season and the playoffs.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: In December 2008, Stoudamire accepted a coaching position as director of player development for the guard-heavy Rice University Owls squad under head coach Ben Braun.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: In May 2011, Stoudamire joined the coaching staff of the University of Memphis Tigers men's basketball team, where his coaching and recruiting contributions were noted with enthusiasm during the '11-'12 season.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: In May 2013, Stoudamire left Memphis to join the coaching staff of the Arizona Wildcats men's basketball team.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: In May 2015, Stoudamire left Arizona to rejoin the coaching staff of the Memphis Tigers men's basketball team.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: In March 2016, Stoudamire left Memphis to take over the head coaching position for the Pacific Tigers men's basketball team.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: Before Arizona hired Gonzaga men’s basketball assistant coach Tommy Lloyd to be their next head coach, Stoudamire was considered among the favorites to be the next coach at his alma mater.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: Stoudamire is the cousin of former NBA players Salim Stoudamire and Terrence Jones, and current NBA player Grant Williams.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: His stint with the Portland Trail Blazers was marred by several marijuana related incidents including one during the 2002–03 season where, with then-starting power forward Rasheed Wallace, his yellow Hummer was pulled over on I-5 for speeding and driving under the influence of marijuana. In July 2003, after his third arrest for marijuana possession, he was fined $250,000 and was suspended by the team for three months. Blazers president Steve Patterson announced that he wanted to void Stoudamire's contract, but did not find a provision in the contract that would allow him to do so.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: Stoudamire completed a 90-day rehabilitation program. In addition, he made an agreement with "The Oregonian" sports columnist John Canzano to take an unannounced urine test during any point of the 2003–04 season to prove his sobriety. Midway through the season, Canzano appeared in the team locker room and produced a specimen bottle which Stoudamire filled. An independent testing laboratory reported back the result that he was indeed clean. The incident rehabilitated Stoudamire in the minds of many Portland fans, who had come to regard him as one of the "Jail Blazers". However, Stoudamire was widely criticized by the NBA Players Association for the drug test, who claimed that NBA players may only submit to such tests as prescribed by the league's Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). The fact that the test was voluntary, and not administered by the league or any of its teams, did not make Stoudamire immune to such criticism. Despite the criticism, no official action was taken by the union against Stoudamire for his participation in the test.


title: Damon Stoudamire

text: In an interview on The Post Game Podcast after retiring, Stoudamire voiced his frustration with how the city received the team and the incident, saying he and his teammates "Were just kids" when it happened.


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: Noah Benjamin Lennox (born July 17, 1978), also known by his moniker Panda Bear, is an American musician, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and co-founding member of the band Animal Collective. In addition to his work with that group, Lennox has released six solo LPs since 1999, with his influential 2007 album "Person Pitch" inspiring numerous subsequent acts. His subsequent albums "Tomboy" (2011) and "Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper" (2015) both reached the "Billboard" 200.


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: Lennox was primarily raised in Baltimore, Maryland, where he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir, and studied piano and cello. The name "Panda Bear" derived from his habit of drawing pandas on his early mixtapes as a teenager. He and the other members of Animal Collective began collaborating in the late 1990s. He has lived in Lisbon, Portugal, since 2004. He was featured on Daft Punk's track "Doin' It Right", from their Grammy Award–winning album "Random Access Memories" (2013).


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: Lennox grew up in the Roland Park section of Baltimore, Maryland, and attended Waldorf School of Baltimore through 8th grade, and Kimberton Waldorf School in Chester County, Pennsylvania, for high school. His family moved frequently during his early years, owing to his father's studies to be an orthopedic surgeon. As a youth, he played sports, mainly soccer and basketball. His brother, Matt Lennox (whom the Animal Collective song "Brother Sport" is directed at), was a leading player on the high school basketball team and Noah was also a team member, playing as point guard.


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: Lennox has also stated in interviews that he enjoyed drawing a lot as a teenager, especially pandas, and later started drawing pandas on his early mixtapes. He also studied piano until he was eight, then cello, and later on he sang tenor in his high school chamber choir.


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: Though he and his family have never been very religious, Lennox briefly attended Boston University, where he majored in religion because of his interest in "the concept of God".


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: As a teen, Lennox began listening to electronic music styles such as house and techno, and artists such as Aphex Twin, all of which became a major influence on his later work. He recorded and performed music solo and with friends. Lennox started using the name "Panda Bear" because he drew pictures of pandas for the artwork of his recordings.


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: Lennox had been friends with Deakin (Josh Dibb) since the second grade. Deakin introduced Lennox to his high school friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz). For years, the four of them swapped homemade recordings, shared musical ideas and performed in different group configurations. Lennox, along with Deakin moved to New York in 2000. The band then became more collaborative in nature and they finally settled on the name "Animal Collective".


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: Since the 2007 releases of Panda Bear's "Person Pitch" and Animal Collective's "Strawberry Jam", he has focused more on using samplers and other electronics in their shows. He has named Black Dice as a major influence stating "Black Dice took us on our first tour and I feel like the wisest things I've learned about being in a band I learned by watching them." He said he looks to "Black Dice" "as a model for a band... I feel like as a band, I can't speak for the other guys [of Animal Collective], but certainly for myself, like I modelled the way I approach to everything with the band watching the way "Black Dice" did it." In addition to singing, Lennox played drums and occasionally guitar in Animal Collective's live performances. He cites Stewart Copeland as the biggest influence on his drumming style; for his drumming work on Animal Collective's 2022 album "Time Skiffs", Lennox cited James Brown's drummers, especially Clyde Stubblefield, as influences.


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: Lennox's early musical influences included electronic styles, and his solo work has been variously characterized as experimental pop, electronic, bedroom pop, neo-psychedelic pop, and indie music. "The Line of Best Fit" called him a "psychedelic pop trailblazer." Lennox's debut album "Panda Bear" was released in 1999 on Soccer Star Records. After focusing more on touring and recording with Animal Collective, he released the follow-up "Young Prayer" in 2004 and the highly acclaimed third solo album "Person Pitch" in 2007. Of his songwriting style, Lennox says "I get impatient writing songs, I can't spend more than a couple of hours before I get frustrated. So I got to kind of spit it out real fast. My favorite songs are the ones where I worked really really fast on, when it comes all out in like two hours or something."


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: Panda Bear's fourth album, "Tomboy", was released April 12, 2011, on his own label, Paw Tracks. He started performing material from "Tomboy" on December 5, 2008, at a show with No Age in Miami, Florida. During a brief European tour in January 2010, he played three shows consisting almost entirely of new material. On March 7, 2010, a tour setlist with titles for ten of the new songs was posted on Panda Bear's MySpace blog. He also played Primavera Sound Festival in 2010. The single "Tomboy" and the b-side "Slow Motion" were released in July 2010. It was announced in August that singles "You Can Count on Me" and "Alsatian Darn" would be released via Domino on September 28. The limited 500 copies of "You Can Count On Me" sold out in less than a day. The single "Last Night at the Jetty" was released December 2010. The single "Surfer's Hymn" was released March 28, 2011.


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: Lennox was chosen by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he planned to curate in December 2011 in Minehead, England. However, Lennox was unable to play when the event was rescheduled to March 2012.


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: In June 2013, Panda Bear performed a set of all new material at ATP. In October 2014, the "Mr Noah" EP was released, featuring four new songs. The full album, "Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper", was released in January 2015.


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: In 2018, Lennox released the vinyl-only "A Day With the Homies" EP, a collection of five songs heavily influenced by house + bass music. Included on the packaging of the release were hidden URLs that pointed to samples used on the EP. In February 2019, he released the LP "Buoys", featuring production work by longtime collaborator Rusty Santos. It was preceded by the single "Dolphin".


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: Lennox plays in the band Jane and Together with DJ Scott Mou. He has also performed on tracks with Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox of Deerhunter), Ducktails "(Matt Mondanile", best known as the former lead guitarist of the American indie rock band Real Estate) and electronic musicians Zomby and Pantha du Prince.


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: Panda Bear appeared on the track "Doin' It Right" on the 2013 Daft Punk album "Random Access Memories". The album won Daft Punk the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2014, making Panda Bear a co-winner. Almost a decade later, Lennox worked with previous Daft Punk collaborators Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon on their new duo's debut single, "Step By Step", in 2022.


title: Panda Bear (musician)

text: In 2004, Lennox moved from New York City to Lisbon, Portugal. He first visited the city for a vacation following a long Animal Collective tour in 2003. Lennox says about Lisbon: "Since I got off the airplane here [for the first time] I had a good feeling about this place." He met his wife, the fashion designer Fernanda Pereira, there; after visiting each other in Lisbon and New York, Lennox decided to move to Europe because he also felt "connected to the European way of life", considering himself as a "slow moving kind of person" and Lisbon as a "slow moving kind of place". Lennox and Pereira have a daughter, Nadja, born in 2005 and a son, born in June 2010. In 2007, he and Pereira collaborated on a line of sweatshirts called "2nd Things".


title: BMW N62

text: The BMW N62 is a naturally aspirated V8 petrol engine which was used in BMW cars from 2001–2010. It also remained in small-scale production for the Morgan Aero until 2019. The N62 is the world's first engine to use a continuously variable-length intake manifold, and BMW's first V8 to feature variable valve lift (called Valvetronic).


title: BMW N62

text: In the International Engine of the Year awards in 2002, the N62 was awarded "International Engine of the Year", "Best New Engine" and "Above 4-litre" categories.


title: BMW N62

text: The N62 was a clean sheet design and not a direct evolution of the M60 engine line that evolved into the M62 engine. The N62 has a bore of and stroke of for a total displacement of 4,398cc and features double-VANOS variable valve timing on both the intake and exhaust camshafts (the M62 features variable valve timing on only the intake camshaft). As per the M62, the N62 has double overhead camshafts (DOHC) with four valves per cylinder, an aluminium engine block, an aluminium cylinder head and offset fracture-split forged powdered metal connecting rods. It was also the first V8 and only the second BMW engine to feature Valvetronic technology which on the N62 varies the valve lift of the engine from .03mm to 9.85mm. The redline is 6500 rpm. Valvetronic technology allows for variable valve timing, variable lift and variable duration and the N62 adjusts the lift instead of utilizing the throttle body during normal operation. The engine does feature a throttle body but this is only used for emergency applications in the event of Valvetronic failure and for certain cold start conditions. A vacuum pump is mounted to cylinder bank 1 to supply vacuum for the brake booster and secondary air injection ports.


title: BMW N62

text: The N62B44 is the only production engine in the world to feature a continuously variable length intake manifold known as the DIVA intake (not to be confused with the DISA intake as used on many other BMW production engines). The intake length path begins to shorten at 3,500 and is progressively shortened until it reaches it's shortest length at the engine's redline.


title: BMW N62

text: The N62B48 engine used in the E53 X5 4.8is was a 4.8L variant of the N62B44 which still utilized many features of the N62B44 such as the DIVA intake manifold.


title: BMW N62

text: The N62B44 was evolved into the N62B48TU beginning in model year 2005. The N62B48 featured several changes over the N62B44, including an increase in the bore size to and stroke to which increased the displacement to 4798.52 cc. Several changes were made to the engine including different exhaust manifolds, replacement of the DIVA continuously variable length intake manifold to a DISA two-stage manifold, removal of secondary air injection ports and several small changes to accommodate the longer stroke crankshaft such as more traditional non-offset connecting rods and a deeper oil pan. It also featured different spark plugs, oxygen sensors, engine computer and inlet and exhaust valves with a stem diameter decreased to 5mm from 6mm.


title: BMW N62

text: The N62B44 is a version. Bore is and stroke is . It produces at 6,100 rpm and at 3,600 rpm. (except for in the X5 model).


title: BMW N62

text: The H1 is a version of the N62B44 made by Alpina. The H1 is based on an N62B44 block with a forged crankshaft from Alpina, high strength Mahle pistons and the addition of an ASA centrifugal supercharger.


The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during the nineteenth century from suggestions by Charles Trevelyan, William Jones, Monier Monier-Williams and other scholars, and formalised by the Transliteration Committee of the Geneva Oriental Congress, in September 1894. IAST makes it possible for the reader to read the Indic text unambiguously, exactly as if it were in the original Indic script. It is this faithfulness to the original scripts that accounts for its continuing popularity amongst scholars.


title: International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration

text: Scholars commonly use IAST in publications that cite textual material in Sanskrit, Pāḷi and other classical Indian languages.


text: IAST is also used for major e-text repositories such as SARIT, Muktabodha, GRETIL, and sanskritdocuments.org.


text: The IAST scheme represents more than a century of scholarly usage in books and journals on classical Indian studies. By contrast, the ISO 15919 standard for transliterating Indic scripts emerged in 2001 from the standards and library worlds. For the most part, ISO 15919 follows the IAST scheme, departing from it only in minor ways (e.g., ṃ/ṁ and ṛ/r̥)—see comparison below.


text: The Indian National Library at Kolkata romanization, intended for the romanisation of all Indic scripts, is an extension of IAST.


text: The IAST letters are listed with their Devanagari equivalents and phonetic values in IPA, valid for Sanskrit, Hindi and other modern languages that use Devanagari script, but some phonological changes have occurred:


text: Some letters are modified with diacritics: Long vowels are marked with an overline. Vocalic (syllabic) consonants, retroflexes and ṣ () have an underdot. One letter has an overdot: ṅ (). One has an acute accent: ś ().


text: Unlike ASCII-only romanizations such as ITRANS or Harvard-Kyoto, the diacritics used for IAST allow capitalization of proper names. The capital variants of letters never occurring word-initially () are useful only when writing in all-caps and in Pāṇini contexts for which the convention is to typeset the "IT" sounds as capital letters.


text: For the most part, IAST is a subset of ISO 15919 that merges: the retroflex (underdotted) liquids with the vocalic ones (ringed below); and the short close-mid vowels with the long ones. The following seven exceptions are from the ISO standard accommodating an extended repertoire of symbols to allow transliteration of Devanāgarī and other Indic scripts, as used for languages other than Sanskrit.


text: The most convenient method of inputting romanized Sanskrit is by setting up an alternative keyboard layout. This allows one to hold a modifier key to type letters with diacritical marks. For example, = ā. How this is set up varies by operating system.


text: Linux/Unix and BSD desktop environments allow one to set up custom keyboard layouts and switch them by clicking a flag icon in the menu bar.


text: macOS One can use the pre-installed US International keyboard, or install Toshiya Unebe's Easy Unicode keyboard layout.


text: Windows also allows one to change keyboard layouts and set up additional custom keyboard mappings for IAST. This Pali keyboard installer made by Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) supports IAST (works on Microsoft Windows up to at least version 10, can use Alt button on the right side of the keyboard instead of Ctrl+Alt combination).


text: Many systems provide a way to select Unicode characters visually. ISO/IEC 14755 refers to this as a "screen-selection entry method".


text: Microsoft Windows has provided a Unicode version of the Character Map program (find it by hitting then type codice_1 then hit ) since version NT 4.0 – appearing in the consumer edition since XP. This is limited to characters in the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). Characters are searchable by Unicode character name, and the table can be limited to a particular code block. More advanced third-party tools of the same type are also available (a notable freeware example is BabelMap).


text: macOS provides a "character palette" with much the same functionality, along with searching by related characters, glyph tables in a font, etc. It can be enabled in the input menu in the menu bar under System Preferences → International → Input Menu (or System Preferences → Language and Text → Input Sources) or can be viewed under Edit → Emoji & Symbols in many programs.


text: Equivalent tools – such as gucharmap (GNOME) or kcharselect (KDE) – exist on most Linux desktop environments.


text: Users of SCIM on Linux based platforms can also have the opportunity to install and use the sa-itrans-iast input handler which provides complete support for the ISO 15919 standard for the romanization of Indic languages as part of the m17n library.


text: Only certain fonts support all the Latin Unicode characters essential for the transliteration of Indic scripts according to the ISO 15919 standard. For example, the Arial, Tahoma and Times New Roman font packages that come with Microsoft Office 2007 and later versions also support precomposed Unicode characters like "ā, ḍ, ḥ, ī, ḷ, ḹ, ṃ, ñ, ṅ, ṇ, ṛ, ṝ, ṣ, ś, ṭ" and "ū," glyphs for some of which are only to be found in the Latin Extended Additional Unicode block. The majority of other text fonts commonly used for book production are defective in their support for one or more characters from this block. Accordingly, many academics working in the area of Sanskrit studies now make use of free and open-source software like LibreOffice, instead of Microsoft Word, in conjunction with free OpenType fonts like FreeSerif or Gentium, both of which have complete support for the full repertoire of conjoined diacritics in the IAST character set. Released under the GNU FreeFont or SIL Open Font License, respectively, such fonts may be freely shared and do not require the person reading or editing a document to purchase proprietary software to make use of its associated fonts.


title: Log4Shell

text: Log4Shell (CVE-2021-44228) was a zero-day vulnerability in Log4j, a popular Java logging framework, involving arbitrary code execution. The vulnerability had existed unnoticed since 2013 and was privately disclosed to the Apache Software Foundation, of which Log4j is a project, by Chen Zhaojun of Alibaba Cloud's security team on 24 November 2021. Before an official CVE identifier was made available on December 10th, 2021, the vulnerability circulated by the name "Log4Shell", given by Free Wortley of the LunaSec team, was initially used to track the issue online. Apache gave Log4Shell a CVSS severity rating of 10, the highest available score. The exploit is simple to execute and is estimated to affect hundreds of millions of devices.


title: Log4Shell

text: The vulnerability takes advantage of Log4j's allowing requests to arbitrary LDAP and JNDI servers, allowing attackers to execute arbitrary Java code on a server or other computer, or leak sensitive information. A list of its affected software projects has been published by the Apache Security Team. Affected commercial services include Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, iCloud, "Minecraft: Java Edition", Steam, Tencent QQ and many others. According to Wiz and EY, the vulnerability affected 93% of enterprise cloud environments.


title: Log4Shell

text: The vulnerability's disclosure received strong reactions from cybersecurity experts. Cybersecurity company Tenable said the exploit was "the single biggest, most critical vulnerability ever", "Ars Technica" called it "arguably the most severe vulnerability ever" and "The Washington Post" said that descriptions by security professionals "border on the apocalyptic".


title: Log4Shell

text: Log4j is an open-source logging framework that allows software developers to log data within their applications. This data can include user input. It is used ubiquitously in Java applications, especially enterprise software. Originally written in 2001 by Ceki Gülcü, it is now part of Apache Logging Services, a project of the Apache Software Foundation. Tom Kellermann, a member of President Obama's Commission on Cyber Security, described Apache as "one of the giant supports of a bridge that facilitates the connective tissue between the worlds of applications and computer environments".


title: Log4Shell

text: The Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI) allows for lookup of Java objects at program runtime given a path to their data. JNDI can leverage several directory interfaces, each providing a different scheme of looking up files. Among these interfaces is the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), a non-Java-specific protocol which retrieves the object data as a URL from an appropriate server, either local or anywhere on the Internet.


title: Log4Shell

text: In the default configuration, when logging a string, Log4j 2 performs string substitution on expressions of the form codice_1. For example, codice_2 might be converted to codice_3. Among the recognized expressions is codice_4; by specifying the lookup to be through LDAP, an arbitrary URL may be queried and loaded as Java object data. codice_5, for example, will load data from that URL if connected to the Internet. By inputting a string that is logged, an attacker can load and execute malicious code hosted on a public URL. Even if execution of the data is disabled, an attacker can still retrieve data—such as secret environment variables—by placing them in the URL, in which case they will be substituted and sent to the attacker's server. Besides LDAP, other potentially exploitable JNDI lookup protocols include its secure variant LDAPS, Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI), the Domain Name System (DNS), and the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP).


title: Log4Shell

text: Because HTTP requests are frequently logged, a common attack vector is placing the malicious string in the HTTP request URL or a commonly logged HTTP header, such as codice_6. Early mitigations included blocking any requests containing potentially malicious contents, such as codice_7. Such basic string matching solutions can be circumvented by obfuscating the request: codice_8, for example, will be converted into a JNDI lookup after performing the lowercase operation on the letter codice_9. Even if an input, such as a first name, is not immediately logged, it may be later logged during internal processing and its contents executed.


title: Log4Shell

text: Fixes for this vulnerability were released on 6 December 2021, three days before the vulnerability was published, in Log4j version 2.15.0-rc1. The fix included restricting the servers and protocols that may be used for lookups. Researchers discovered a related bug, CVE-2021-45046, that allows local or remote code execution in certain non-default configurations and was fixed in version 2.16.0, which disabled all features using JNDI and support for message lookups. Two more vulnerabilities in the library were found: a denial-of-service attack, tracked as CVE-2021-45105 and fixed in 2.17.0; and a difficult-to-exploit remote code execution vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2021-44832 and fixed in 2.17.1. For previous versions, the class codice_10 needs to be removed from the classpath to mitigate both vulnerabilities. An early recommended fix for older versions was to set the system property codice_11 to codice_12, but this change does not prevent exploitation of CVE-2021-45046 and was later found to not disable message lookups in certain cases.


title: Log4Shell

text: Newer versions of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) also mitigate this vulnerability by blocking remote code from being loaded by default, although other attack vectors still exist in certain applications. Several methods and tools have been published that help detect vulnerable Log4j versions used in built Java packages.


title: Log4Shell

text: The exploit allows hackers to gain control of vulnerable devices using Java. Some hackers employ the vulnerability to use victims' devices for cryptocurrency mining, creating botnets, sending spam, establishing backdoors and other illegal activities such as ransomware attacks. In the days following the vulnerability's disclosure, Check Point observed millions of attacks being initiated by hackers, with some researchers observing a rate of over one hundred attacks per minute that ultimately resulted with attempted attacks on over 40% of business networks internationally.


title: Log4Shell

text: According to Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, evidence for usage or testing of the exploit goes back as early as 1 December, nine days before it was publicly disclosed. According to cybersecurity firm GreyNoise, several IP addresses were scraping websites to check for servers that had the vulnerability. Several botnets began scanning for the vulnerability, including the Muhstik botnet by 10 December, as well as Mirai and Tsunami. Ransomware group Conti was observed using the vulnerability on 17 December.


title: Log4Shell

text: Some state-sponsored groups in China and Iran also utilized the exploit according to Check Point, but it is not known if the exploit was used by Israel, Russia or the United States prior to the disclosure of the vulnerability. Check Point said that on 15 December 2021, Iran-backed hackers attempted to infiltrate the networks of Israeli businesses and government institutions.


title: Log4Shell

text: In the United States, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Jen Easterly, described the exploit as "one of the most serious I've seen in my entire career, if not the most serious", explaining that hundreds of millions of devices were affected and advising vendors to prioritize software updates. Civilian agencies contracted by the United States government had until 24 December 2021 to patch vulnerabilities. On 4 January, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stated its intent to pursue companies that fail to take reasonable steps to update used Log4j software. In a White House meeting, the importance of security maintenance of open-source software – often also carried out largely by few volunteers – to national security was clarified. While some open-source projects have many eyes on them, others do not have many or any people ensuring their security.


title: Log4Shell

text: Germany's Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) designated the exploit as being at the agency's highest threat level, calling it an "extremely critical threat situation" (translated). It also reported that several attacks were already successful and that the extent of the exploit remained hard to assess. The Netherlands's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) began an ongoing list of vulnerable applications.


title: Log4Shell

text: The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS) called on organizations to take immediate action. The Canada Revenue Agency temporarily shut down its online services after learning of the exploit, while the Government of Quebec closed almost 4,000 of its websites as a "preventative measure." The Belgian Ministry of Defence experienced a breach attempt and was forced to shut down part of its network.


title: Log4Shell

text: The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology suspended work with Alibaba Cloud as a cybersecurity threat intelligence partner for six months for failing to report the vulnerability to the government first.


title: Log4Shell

text: Research conducted by Wiz and EY showed that 93% of the cloud enterprise environment were vulnerable to Log4Shell. 7% of vulnerable workloads are exposed to the internet and prone to wide exploitation attempts. According to the research, ten days after vulnerability disclosure (20 December 2021) only 45% of vulnerable workloads were patched on average in cloud environments. Amazon, Google and Microsoft cloud data was affected by Log4Shell. Microsoft asked Windows and Azure customers to remain vigilant after observing state-sponsored and cyber-criminal attackers probing systems for the Log4j 'Log4Shell' flaw through December 2021.