title: Watercraft

text: Navigation aids have varied over time: from astronomical observation, to mechanical mechanisms, and more recently analogue and digital computer devices that now rely on GPS systems.


title: Watercraft

text: Until development of steam propulsion was coupled with rapid-firing breech-loading guns, naval combat was often concluded by a boarding combat between the opposing crews. Since the early 20th century, there has been a substantial development in technologies which allow force projection from a naval task force to a land objective using marine infantry.


title: Madame X Tour

text: The Madame X Tour was the eleventh concert tour by American singer Madonna, in support of her fourteenth studio album, "Madame X" (2019). It began on September 17, 2019, at New York City's BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, and ended on March 8, 2020, at Paris Grand Rex. An all-theater tour, it was the singer's first time playing small venues since The Virgin Tour (1985); she had previously shown interest in doing a smaller-scale show during a 2017 interview. The tour consisted exclusively of dates in the United States, England, France, and Portugal; mobile phones and smart watches were banned from the concerts, which was met with mixed reactions from fans.


title: Madame X Tour

text: The tour was met with positive reviews from critics, although the inclusion of "Madame X" album cuts garnered some criticism. Controversy arose due to Madonna's late show starts, with a fan going as far as to file a class action lawsuit against her. At the 2020 "Billboard" year-end boxscore charts, it was reported that Madame X had grossed over $36,385,935 from an audience of 124,655. After several cancellations due to a recurring knee injury, the tour ended abruptly three days before its planned end date, following on from the French government announcing a ban on gatherings of more than 1,000 people to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. Shot during the Lisbon dates, the concert film "Madame X" was directed by Ricardo Gomes, Sasha Kasiuha, and Nuno Xico. It had its premiere on September 23 at New York's Times Square Edition Hotel, and was released through Paramount+ on October 8, 2021.


title: Madame X Tour

text: In 2017, Madonna relocated to Lisbon when seeking a top football academy for her son David Banda, who wanted to become a professional association football player. While living in the city, she began meeting artists; painters and musicians who would invite her to "living room sessions." In the sessions, they would bring food and sit around the table, and musicians would start playing instruments, singing fado and samba music. The singer's fourteenth studio album "Madame X" was released on June 14, 2019; it became Madonna's ninth number-one album on the "Billboard" 200. Prior to the album's release, the singer had expressed the idea of going on tour during a backstage interview at the 2019 "Billboard" Music Awards. During a 2017 interview with BBC News Madonna had mentioned the possibility of doing a smaller-scale show; "I've done so many shows—world tours, stadiums, arenas, you name it—that I feel like I have to reinvent that now too. I like doing intimate shows and being able to talk directly to the audience." The Madame X Tour was officially announced by the singer on May 6, 2019, through her official Twitter account, where she posted a short promotional video co-starring Diplo. It visited smaller venues as the singer liked, in her own words, "the idea of staying in one place and people coming to me." It marked the first time Madonna played theaters and small venues since 1985's The Virgin Tour.


title: Madame X Tour

text: Mobile phones and smart watches were banned from the concerts; attendees were required to put their devices in pouches ahead of each show. A source explained that "[Madonna] wants to have an intimate experience with her audience without phones up in the air and screens separating fans from the performance." Fans online complained of the "stress" of the ban, while others said it made for a "good concert experience." In a telephone interview with Mario Lopez for Megaphone, Madonna said the set list would be 70% new material. Jamie King was appointed creative director; personnel working on the tour included 41 musicians, Monte Pittman on guitar, backup singer Dana "Yahzarah" Williams, 12 dancers, and 14 of the 22 women of the Batukadeiras Orchestra.


title: Madame X Tour

text: Stufish provided the show’s sets, which include mapped video projection, large-scale video images, staircases, and other reconfigurable scenic pieces that were compared to a Rubik's Cube. The wardrobe included a glittery Revolutionary War attire with feathered tricorne hat and a chiffon dress, with frills and Swarovski crystals designed by Francesco Scognamiglio. Additional articles were provided by Prada, Burberry, Miu Miu, and Versace. For the performance of "Frozen" (1998), Luigi & Iango filmed a "dramatic" black and white video of Madonna's eldest daughter Lourdes Leon as a "shape-shifting spirit who finds her freedom through her movements." A week before the tour kicked off, a pop-up store was announced in New York; it counted with exclusive merchandise such as signed vinyls, signed and framed art prints, hand-painted hoodies, and tees. The store also had a make-up counter with artists available each day, an interactive photo booth, and a station where shoppers could add embroidery to their items. The Madame X Tour officially began on September 17, 2019, at New York City's BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, and ended on March 8, 2020, at Paris Grand Rex.


title: Madame X Tour

text: The show began with a quote by James Baldwin: "Art is here to prove that all safety is an illusion... Artists are here to disturb the peace." Then, a silhouetted woman sat at a typewriter; each key press sounding like a gunshot, accompanied by a dancer jerking and flinching as if he had been shot. Madonna then appeared to sing "God Control" while being bounced between two police officers’ shields. The number had cops attacking dancers under a video montage of news footage. "Dark Ballet" was performed next, with Joan of Arc references and the singer fighting dancers in gas masks reminiscent of the mice in "The Nutcracker" (1892); it counted with a ballet breakdown halfway through. Afterwards, Madonna yelled "Fuck the patriarchy!" before being dragged by dancers dressed as policemen into a circular cell in the stage. This led to a rendition of "Human Nature", as pointing fingers were projected across the stage. Towards the end, she played a bongo solo and was surrounded by 11 black women − including her twin daughters Stella, Estere, and Mercy James − and chanted the phrase "I'm not your bitch!" An a capella rendition of "Express Yourself" and a brief interlude where Madonna addressed the audience followed.


title: Madame X Tour

text: "Vogue" and "I Don't Search I Find" were performed with lookalike dancers dressed in blonde wigs, trench coats, shades, and high heels. Next, Madonna sang the first verse and chorus of "Papa Don't Preach"; she changed the lyric "I'm keeping my baby" to "I'm "not" keeping my baby". Afterwards, she played guitar for "American Life" while uniforms fell down from above the stage, and dancers dressed as soldiers dragged a coffin. "Batuka" had 14 women of the Batukadeiras Orchestra playing the drums while Madonna sat to the side on a stairwell before eventually joining them and doing batuque moves. What came next were performances of Isabel De Oliveira's "Fado Pechincha", and "Madame X" album tracks "Killers Who are Partying" and "Crazy" - the last one was played with an accordion. A cha-cha-chá mashup of "La Isla Bonita" and a new song called "Welcome to My Fado Club" was performed next, followed by a guitar rendition of Cesária Évora's "Sodade". The next numbers were "Medellín", with Maluma appearing on the backdrop screens, and album track "Extreme Occident". An interlude of dancers doing synchronized moves to lyrics of "Rescue Me" followed.


title: Madame X Tour

text: "Frozen" saw the singer performing in the middle of a massive projection of the video of Leon. For "Come Alive", Madonna and the dancers wore colorful flowing robes. She then played the piano for "Future" and was joined by dancers with red lights on their eyes; the word "Warning" flashed on the stage behind her as she sang. The Tracy Young remix of "Crave" featured Madonna dancing with her twin daughters, while "Like a Prayer" had her performing in front of an X-shaped staircase while surrounded by a choir and the song's music video projected on the stage. The final number, "I Rise", began with Emma González speech being presented on the screen, which then showed news footage of protests and marches. Halfway through, the screen turned the colors of the Rainbow flag as Madonna and her dancers left the stage through the audience with their fists raised.


title: Madame X Tour

text: The Madame X Tour was met with positive reviews from critics; "Rolling Stone"s Rob Sheffield deemed it "excellent" and a "testament to the genius in her madness", concluding that it proves "Madonna will never be the kind of superstar who repeats her successes, sticks to her strengths, or plays it safe. Instead, she's getting weirder with age. Thank all the angels and saints for that." Jon Pareles, writing for "The New York Times", said on his review that "as both album and show, 'Madame X' is Madonna's latest declaration of a defiant, self-assured, flexible identity that's entirely comfortable with dualities [...] Yes, she is 61, but her music remains determinedly contemporary." "Variety"s Ilana Kaplan considered it "at times[,] performance art, a political rally, a comedy show, a church and even her home in Lisbon." Rhian Daly from "NME" gave the concert a particularly positive review by calling it "powerful, empowering, stunning", and "one of the best gigs of the year." Bradley Stern, for "Paper", opined it was "unlike any other Madonna tour to date", as well as a "hybrid between an actual theatrical production and a concert." According to "Pollstar"s Amy Linden, The Madame X Tour is an example of what is known within the music industry as an "underplay [...] when an A or maybe B+ level musician opts out of the de rigueur arena or shed tour in favor of a more intimate and modest venue [...] With Madame X, Madonna joins the ranks of an impressive list of musicians who have also turned the volume down, so to speak." Liden concluded that being able to see the singer in "such close proximity" added a "magical and elite vibe."


title: Madame X Tour

text: Will Gompertz from BBC News gave the concert a five-star rating, and opined it was "perfectly imperfect, like one of those sketchy landscapes by Cezanne where you can see his underdrawings and misplaced lines, making it so much more beautiful and real than Canaletto's soulless precision." Gompertz concluded his review by saying Madame X was an "adventurous piece of contemporary theatre, and a match for any of the Tony and Olivier-winning shows currently playing the West End and Broadway."


title: Madame X Tour

text: Aidin Vaziri from the "San Francisco Chronicle" noted how, even though the singer was "battling a cold, suffering from a torn ligament and had a bad knee", she still put on a "spectacular show." For "Las Vegas Weekly", Josh Bell considered it, despite the smaller venues, "every bit as majestic as Madonna's arena tours." The performances were also praised; Bell highlighted "Human Nature" and "American Life" for fitting "best with the theme of defiance", and "Like a Prayer" for being "every bit as awe-inspiring and empowering as when it was first released." "LA Weekly"s Brett Callwood singled out the "gorgeous rendition" of "Frozen" and the "hair-raising" "Like a Prayer". Stern felt the singer had recreated performances from the past: he saw "American Life" as a "minimized version" of the Re-Invention World Tour (2004) performance; "Vogue" and "I Don't Search I Find" recalled Madonna's appearance at Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019; "Dark Ballet" and "Like a Prayer" were "essentially the same stairwell-style set up" of both the Met Gala and Eurovision performances, and "Medellín" was "more or less a recreation of her 2019 "Billboard" Awards performance." Leslie Katz, writing for the "San Francisco Examiner", considered "Batuka" "the evening's most joyous number." For "Digital Journal", Markos Papadatos singled out the rendition of "Crave" as "sheer bliss", and considered "Like a Prayer" the "anthem for the night" that earned the singer a "lengthy standing ovation."


title: Madame X Tour

text: The inclusion of "Madame X" album cuts was met with both criticism and praise; Kaplan said it was "almost cruel" that singles such as "Papa Don't Preach" and "Express Yourself" were "cut to under a minute", while the album tracks were performed on its entirety. For "Philadelphia"s Victor Fiorillo, there was "too much ["Madame X"] material — some of it straight-up filler — and presented in such a meandering way, that any sense of flow, arc, or climax was continuously undermined." Rob Sheffield applauded the inclusion of album tracks, as he felt they "work much better in a theater setting." Daly opined that the singer looked happiest when she was "paying tribute to the musicians and sounds that inspired her to make that record" rather than "her wealth of classics." From "Consequence", Michael Roffman felt the singer's "self-deprecating and brazenly honest" behavior was "far more riveting than hearing fucking 'Into the Groove' again."


title: Madame X Tour

text: In more critical reviews, Selena Fragassi from the "Chicago Sun-Times" opined that, although the singer "relied way too heavily on Auto-Tune, and her intimate between-act stage banter was incredibly bizarre and disjointed [...] when she was on stage all eyes were glued to her." "Entertainment Weekly"s Leah Greenblatt wrote: "The show is hardly without flaws: her political messaging, though heartfelt, is often clumsily on the nose, and several set projections leaned toward the community-theater end of things." Leslie Katz classified Madame X as "paradoxically both charming and offputting [...] Although [the] setting was smaller than the arenas she's filled during her decades as the world's biggest pop star, it was hardly an intimate or casual affair." Mikael Wood, from the "Los Angeles Times", expressed, "for Madonna, intimate doesn't necessarily mean focused. Like the "Madame X" album [...] the opening Wiltern concert was a bit of a mess." Fiorillo wrote that "the theater of Madonna just doesn't work as a piece of theater, and great theater is clearly what she is trying to achieve." He felt the show could have benefited from "a real director [...] somebody who [...] could transform the show from a concert with some really cool theatrical elements into an evening of beautiful theater." The Odyssey's Rocco Papa felt that "[Madonna] tried to shrink a stadium show and fit it in a small theater." He also felt the final result lacked real intimacy and criticized the absence of the singer's past material from the set list. The staff of "Billboard" named the Madame X Tour one of the best live shows of 2019.


title: Madame X Tour

text: The first tickets and VIP packages were allotted to the members of "Icon", Madonna's official fan club; price for entrances ranged from $60 to $760. Additionally, fans were given the opportunity to purchase tickets at $10 through the singer's official website. Due to an "overwhelming demand", more concerts were announced in New York and Los Angeles the same day the tour was officially confirmed. In October, "Billboard" reported that the first 16 dates had grossed $9.6 million and sold over 31,401 tickets. At the 2020 "Billboard" year-end boxscore charts, it was reported that the Madame X Tour had raked in $36,385,935 from an audience of 124,655; additionally, the shows at the London Palladium were ranked on the seventh position of the top 25 Boxscore of the year, with $9,816,383 grossed.


title: Madame X Tour

text: Madonna's tardiness was widely criticized. In Las Vegas, she took the stage at 12:30am when the concert was scheduled to start at 10:30pm; she then told the audience: "A queen is never late." This was met with backlash from fans, who demanded a refund and deemed her attitude "condescending and alienating." A man from Florida named Nate Hollander went as far as to file a class action lawsuit against Madonna after the Miami concert he planned to attend was pushed back by two hours to accommodate the singer's tardiness. "Ticketholders had to work and go to school the next day, which prevented them from attending a concert that would end at around 1:00 a.m.", the lawsuit read. Hollander then attempted to obtain a refund for the three entrances he had purchased but was unsuccessful. Due to the singer's late appearance for the February 5, 2020, concert in London, the show went over the Palladium's 11pm curfew, causing the venue to pull the curtains down on the concert. The final song, "I Rise", was performed with the lights and Madonna's microphone switched off. She claimed it was "5 minutes past our 11:00 curfew" and accused the venue of trying to "censor" her and of "pulling down the metal fire curtain that weighs nine tonnes." The venue denied having used the fire curtain, but did not directly comment on the show being cut short. Madonna then posted a video on Instagram showing her swearing from behind the curtain, before eventually returning to perform "I Rise".


title: Madame X Tour

text: Following the cancellation of the last North American concert, the singer took to Instagram and talked about the "indescribable" pain caused by an injury: "As I climbed the ladder to sing 'Batuka' on Saturday night in Miami I was in tears from the pain of my injuries [...] With every song I sang, I said a prayer that I would make it to the next and get thru the show [...] However this time I have to listen to my body And accept that my pain is a warning I want to say how deeply sorry I am to all my fans." After several cancellations due to the recurring injury, the tour ended abruptly three days before its planned final date, after the French government announced a ban on gatherings of more than 1,000 people to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the midst of the ongoing pandemic.


title: Madame X Tour

text: On February 18, 2021, "¡Hola!" reported that Madonna would release a documentary film with behind-the-scenes footage from the tour exclusively through Netflix. A source said the project would depict the Madame X Tour "for the spectacle that it was", revealing how the singer "quite literally put blood, sweat and tears into [the concert]." The article also said Madonna was "incredibly involved", having spent weeks "watching previews and helping to edit the footage at home." That same month, it was reported that Madonna was re-shooting scenes for the film. On July 15, 2021, it was announced that the documentary would premiere exclusively through Paramount+ on Friday October 8; it would be available for subscribers in North and South America, Australia, and the Nordics. The film made its television debut on October 7, when it aired on MTV UK.


title: Madame X Tour

text: Shot during the Lisbon concerts and directed by Ricardo Gomes, Sasha Kasiuha, and Nuno Xico, "Madame X" had its premiere on September 23 at New York's Times Square Edition Hotel; Madonna herself attended the event. Reviews were generally positive: "The Guardian"s Alexis Petridis deemed it "beautifully shot", while according to "NME"s Nick Levine it "proves the Queen of Pop is still in her prime." On a more mixed review, Owen Gleiberman from "Variety" opined the documentary is "heavy on message" but "light in euphoria." To promote the release, Madonna gave a surprise performance in the basement of Marcus Samuelsson's Harlem restaurant Red Rooster.


title: Madame X Tour

text: The following set list was obtained from the concert held on October 16, 2019, at the Chicago Theatre. It does not represent all concerts for the duration of the tour.


title: ActionScript

text: ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (meaning it is a superset of the syntax and semantics of the language more widely known as JavaScript), though it originally arose as a sibling, both being influenced by HyperTalk. ActionScript code is usually converted to byte-code format by the compiler.


title: ActionScript

text: ActionScript is used primarily for the development of websites and software targeting the Adobe Flash platform, originally finding use on Web pages in the form of embedded SWF files.


title: ActionScript

text: ActionScript 3 is also used with Adobe AIR system for the development of desktop and mobile applications. The language itself is open-source in that its specification is offered free of charge and both an open source compiler (as part of Apache Flex) and open source virtual machine (Tamarin) are available.


title: ActionScript

text: ActionScript was also used with Scaleform GFx for the development of 3D video game user interfaces and HUDs.


title: ActionScript

text: ActionScript was initially designed for controlling simple 2D vector animations made in Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash). Initially focused on animation, early versions of Flash content offered few interactivity features and thus had very limited scripting capability. Later versions added functionality allowing for the creation of web-based games and rich web applications with streaming media (such as video and audio). Today, ActionScript is suitable for desktop and mobile development through Adobe AIR, it is used in some database applications and in basic robotics as in Make Controller Kit.


title: ActionScript

text: Flash MX 2004 introduced ActionScript 2.0, a scripting language more suited to the development of Flash applications. It is often possible to save time by scripting something rather than animating it, which usually also enables a higher level of flexibility when editing.


title: ActionScript

text: Since the arrival of the Flash Player 9 alpha (in 2006) a newer version of ActionScript has been released, ActionScript 3.0. This version of the language is intended to be compiled and run on a version of the ActionScript Virtual Machine that has been itself completely re-written from the ground up (dubbed AVM2). Because of this, code written in ActionScript 3.0 is generally targeted for Flash Player 9 and higher and will not work in previous versions. At the same time, ActionScript 3.0 executes up to 10 times faster than legacy ActionScript code due to the Just-In-Time compiler enhancements.


title: ActionScript

text: Flash libraries can be used with the XML capabilities of the browser to render rich content in the browser. This technology is known as Asynchronous Flash and XML, much like AJAX. Adobe offers its Flex product line to meet the demand for rich web applications built on the Flash runtime, with behaviors and programming done in ActionScript. ActionScript 3.0 forms the foundation of the Flex 2 API.


title: ActionScript

text: ActionScript started as an object-oriented programming language for Macromedia's Flash authoring tool, later developed by Adobe Systems as Adobe Flash. The first three versions of the Flash authoring tool provided limited interactivity features. Early Flash developers could attach a simple command, called an "action", to a button or a frame. The set of actions was basic navigation controls, with commands such as "play", "stop", "getURL", and "gotoAndPlay".


title: ActionScript

text: With the release of Flash 4 in 1999, this simple set of actions became a small scripting language. New capabilities introduced for Flash 4 included variables, expressions, operators, if statements, and loops. Although referred to internally as "ActionScript", the Flash 4 user manual and marketing documents continued to use the term "actions" to describe this set of commands.


title: ActionScript

text: With the release of Flash 5 in September 2000, the "actions" from Flash 4 were enhanced once more and named "ActionScript" for the first time. This was the first version of ActionScript with influences from JavaScript and the ECMA-262 (Third Edition) standard, supporting the said standard's object model and many of its core data types. Local variables may be declared with the statement, and user-defined functions with parameter passing and return values can also be created. Notably, ActionScript could now also be typed with a text editor rather than being assembled by choosing actions from drop-down lists and dialog box controls. With the next release of its authoring tool, Flash MX, and its corresponding player, Flash Player 6, the language remained essentially unchanged; there were only minor changes, such as the addition of the statement and the "strict equality" () operator, which brought it closer to being ECMA-262-compliant. Two important features of ActionScript that distinguish it from later versions are its loose type system and its reliance on prototype-based inheritance. Loose typing refers to the ability of a variable to hold any type of data. This allows for rapid script development and is particularly well-suited for small-scale scripting projects. Prototype-based inheritance is the ActionScript 1.0 mechanism for code reuse and object-oriented programming. Instead of a keyword that defines common characteristics of a class, ActionScript 1.0 uses a special object that serves as a "prototype" for a class of objects. All common characteristics of a class are defined in the class's prototype object and every instance of that class contains a link to that prototype object.


title: ActionScript

text: The next major revision of the language, ActionScript 2.0, was introduced in September 2003 with the release of Flash MX 2004 and its corresponding player, Flash Player 7. In response to user demand for a language better equipped for larger and more complex applications, ActionScript 2.0 featured compile-time type checking and class-based syntax, such as the keywords and .


title: ActionScript

text: (While this allowed for a more structured object-oriented programming approach, the code would still be compiled to ActionScript 1.0 bytecode, allowing it to be used on the preceding Flash Player 6 as well.


title: ActionScript

text: In other words, the class-based inheritance syntax was a layer on top of the existing prototype-based system.) With ActionScript 2.0, developers could constrain variables to a specific type by adding a type annotation so that type mismatch errors could be found at compile-time.


title: ActionScript

text: ActionScript 2.0 also introduced class-based inheritance syntax so that developers could create classes and interfaces, much as they would in class-based languages such as Java and C++. This version conformed partially to the ECMAScript Fourth Edition draft specification.


title: ActionScript

text: In June 2006, ActionScript 3.0 debuted with Adobe Flex 2.0 and its corresponding player, Flash Player 9. ActionScript 3.0 was a fundamental restructuring of the language, so much so that it uses an entirely different virtual machine. Flash Player 9 contains two virtual machines, AVM1 for code written in ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0, and AVM2 for content written in ActionScript 3.0. ActionScript 3.0 added limited support for hardware acceleration (DirectX, OpenGL).


title: ActionScript

text: Adobe AIR supports ActionScript, in addition to some extended contents, such as the Stage3D engine Adobe has developed. The number of APIs (Application programming interfaces) available to ActionScript 3.0 has also risen dramatically.


title: ActionScript

text: ActionScript code is free form and thus may be created with whichever amount or style of whitespace that the author desires. The basic syntax is derived from ECMAScript.


title: ActionScript

text: The following code, which works in any compliant player, creates a text field at depth 0, at position (0, 0) on the screen (measured in pixels), that is 100 pixels wide and high. Then the codice_1 parameter is set to the "" string, and it is automatically displayed in the player:


title: ActionScript

text: When writing external ActionScript 2.0 class files the above example could be written in a file named as following.


title: ActionScript

text: ActionScript 3.0 has a similar syntax to ActionScript 2.0, but a different set of APIs for creating objects. Compare the script below to the previous ActionScript 2.0 version:


title: ActionScript

text: Minimal ActionScript 3.0 programs may be somewhat larger and more complicated due to the increased separation of the programming language and the Flash IDE.


title: ActionScript

text: ActionScript primarily consists of "fundamental" or "simple" data types that are used to create other data types. These data types are very similar to Java data types. Since ActionScript 3 was a complete rewrite of ActionScript 2, the data types and their inheritances have changed.


title: ActionScript

text: There are additional "complex" data types. These are more processor and memory intensive and consist of many "simple" data types. For AS2, some of these data types are:


title: ActionScript

text: Unlike some object-oriented languages, ActionScript makes no distinction between primitive types and reference types. In ActionScript, all variables are reference types. However, objects that belong to the primitive data types, which includes Boolean, Number, int, uint, and String, are immutable.


title: ActionScript

text: So if a variable of a supposedly primitive type, e.g. an integer is passed to a function, altering that variable inside the function will not alter the original variable, as a new int Object is created when inside the function. If a variable of another (not primitive) datatype, e.g. XML is passed to a function, altering that variable inside the function will alter the original variable as well, as no new XML Object is created.


title: ActionScript

text: A reference in ActionScript is a pointer to an instance of a class. A reference stores the memory address of an object – operations against references will follow the value of the reference to the memory address of the object and carry out the operation on that object. All objects in ActionScript are accessed through references instead of being accessed directly.


title: ActionScript

text: Only references to an object may be removed by using the "delete" keyword. Removal of actual objects and data is done by the Flash Player garbage collector which checks for any existing references in the Flash memory space. If none are found (no other reference is made to the orphaned object), it is removed from memory. For this reason, memory management in ActionScript requires careful application development planning.


title: ActionScript

text: Like most bytecode file formats, Flash SWF files can be decompiled into their source code and assets (similarly to how Microsoft .NET files can be decompiled). Some decompilers are capable of nearly full reconstruction of the original source file, down to the actual code that was used during creation (although results vary on a case-by-case basis).


title: ActionScript

text: In opposition to the decompilers, ActionScript obfuscators have been introduced, which transform code into a form that breaks decompiler output while preserving the functionality and structure of the program. Higher-quality obfuscators implement lexical transformations such as identifier renaming, control flow transformation, and data abstraction transformation which collectively make it harder for decompilers to generate output likely to be useful to a human. Less robust obfuscators insert traps for decompilers. Such obfuscators either cause the decompiler software to crash unexpectedly or to generate unintelligible source code.


title: ActionScript

text: The following is an example of ActionScript 3.0 code generated by a decompiler program, before and after obfuscation.


title: Cohomology

text: In mathematics, specifically in homology theory and algebraic topology, cohomology is a general term for a sequence of abelian groups, usually one associated with a topological space, often defined from a cochain complex. Cohomology can be viewed as a method of assigning richer algebraic invariants to a space than homology. Some versions of cohomology arise by dualizing the construction of homology. In other words, cochains are functions on the group of chains in homology theory.


title: Cohomology

text: From its beginning in topology, this idea became a dominant method in the mathematics of the second half of the twentieth century. From the initial idea of homology as a method of constructing algebraic invariants of topological spaces, the range of applications of homology and cohomology theories has spread throughout geometry and algebra. The terminology tends to hide the fact that cohomology, a contravariant theory, is more natural than homology in many applications. At a basic level, this has to do with functions and pullbacks in geometric situations: given spaces "X" and "Y", and some kind of function "F" on "Y", for any mapping , composition with "f" gives rise to a function on "X". The most important cohomology theories have a product, the cup product, which gives them a ring structure. Because of this feature, cohomology is usually a stronger invariant than homology.


title: Cohomology

text: Singular cohomology is a powerful invariant in topology, associating a graded-commutative ring with any topological space. Every continuous map "f": "X" → "Y" determines a homomorphism from the cohomology ring of "Y" to that of "X"; this puts strong restrictions on the possible maps from "X" to "Y". Unlike more subtle invariants such as homotopy groups, the cohomology ring tends to be computable in practice for spaces of interest.


title: Cohomology

text: For a topological space "X", the definition of singular cohomology starts with the singular chain complex:


title: Cohomology

text: By definition, the singular homology of "X" is the homology of this chain complex (the kernel of one homomorphism modulo the image of the previous one). In more detail, "C" is the free abelian group on the set of continuous maps from the standard "i"-simplex to "X" (called "singular "i"-simplices in "X""), and ∂ is the "i"-th boundary homomorphism. The groups "C" are zero for "i" negative.


title: Cohomology

text: Now fix an abelian group "A", and replace each group "C" by its dual group formula_2 and formula_3 by its dual homomorphism


title: Cohomology

text: For an integer "i", the "i" cohomology group of "X" with coefficients in "A" is defined to be ker("d")/im("d") and denoted by "H"("X", "A"). The group "H"("X", "A") is zero for "i" negative. The elements of formula_6 are called singular "i"-cochains with coefficients in "A". (Equivalently, an "i"-cochain on "X" can be identified with a function from the set of singular "i"-simplices in "X" to "A".) Elements of ker("d") and im("d") are called cocycles and coboundaries, respectively, while elements of ker("d")/im("d") = "H"("X", "A") are called cohomology classes (because they are equivalence classes of cocycles).


title: Cohomology

text: In what follows, the coefficient group "A" is sometimes not written. It is common to take "A" to be a commutative ring "R"; then the cohomology groups are "R"-modules. A standard choice is the ring Z of integers.


title: Cohomology

text: On the other hand, cohomology has a crucial structure that homology does not: for any topological space "X" and commutative ring "R", there is a bilinear map, called the cup product:


title: Cohomology

text: defined by an explicit formula on singular cochains. The product of cohomology classes "u" and "v" is written as "u" ∪ "v" or simply as "uv". This product makes the direct sum


title: Cohomology

text: For any continuous map formula_20 the pullback formula_21 is a homomorphism of graded "R"-algebras. It follows that if two spaces are homotopy equivalent, then their cohomology rings are isomorphic.


title: Cohomology

text: Here are some of the geometric interpretations of the cup product. In what follows, manifolds are understood to be without boundary, unless stated otherwise. A closed manifold means a compact manifold (without boundary), whereas a closed submanifold "N" of a manifold "M" means a submanifold that is a closed subset of "M", not necessarily compact (although "N" is automatically compact if "M" is).


title: Cohomology

text: Very informally, for any topological space "X", elements of formula_25 can be thought of as represented by codimension-"i" subspaces of "X" that can move freely on "X". For example, one way to define an element of formula_25 is to give a continuous map "f" from "X" to a manifold "M" and a closed codimension-"i" submanifold "N" of "M" with an orientation on the normal bundle. Informally, one thinks of the resulting class formula_27 as lying on the subspace formula_28 of "X"; this is justified in that the class formula_29 restricts to zero in the cohomology of the open subset formula_30 The cohomology class formula_29 can move freely on "X" in the sense that "N" could be replaced by any continuous deformation of "N" inside "M".


title: Cohomology

text: The cup product on cohomology can be viewed as coming from the diagonal map Δ: "X" → "X" × "X", "x" ↦ ("x","x"). Namely, for any spaces "X" and "Y" with cohomology classes "u" ∈ "H"("X","R") and "v" ∈ "H"("Y","R"), there is an external product (or cross product) cohomology class "u" × "v" ∈ "H"("X" × "Y","R"). The cup product of classes "u" ∈ "H"("X","R") and "v" ∈ "H"("X","R") can be defined as the pullback of the external product by the diagonal:


title: Cohomology

text: Alternatively, the external product can be defined in terms of the cup product. For spaces "X" and "Y", write "f": "X" × "Y" → "X" and "g": "X" × "Y" → "Y" for the two projections. Then the external product of classes "u" ∈ "H"("X","R") and "v" ∈ "H"("Y","R") is:


title: Cohomology

text: Another interpretation of Poincaré duality is that the cohomology ring of a closed oriented manifold is self-dual in a strong sense. Namely, let "X" be a closed connected oriented manifold of dimension "n", and let "F" be a field. Then "H"("X","F") is isomorphic to "F", and the product


title: Cohomology

text: is a perfect pairing for each integer "i". In particular, the vector spaces "H"("X","F") and "H"("X","F") have the same (finite) dimension. Likewise, the product on integral cohomology modulo torsion with values in "H"("X",Z) ≅ Z is a perfect pairing over Z.


title: Cohomology

text: An oriented real vector bundle "E" of rank "r" over a topological space "X" determines a cohomology class on "X", the Euler class χ("E") ∈ "H"("X",Z). Informally, the Euler class is the class of the zero set of a general section of "E". That interpretation can be made more explicit when "E" is a smooth vector bundle over a smooth manifold "X", since then a general smooth section of "X" vanishes on a codimension-"r" submanifold of "X".


title: Cohomology

text: There are several other types of characteristic classes for vector bundles that take values in cohomology, including Chern classes, Stiefel–Whitney classes, and Pontryagin classes.


title: Cohomology

text: For each abelian group "A" and natural number "j", there is a space formula_40 whose "j"-th homotopy group is isomorphic to "A" and whose other homotopy groups are zero. Such a space is called an Eilenberg–MacLane space. This space has the remarkable property that it is a classifying space for cohomology: there is a natural element "u" of formula_41, and every cohomology class of degree "j" on every space "X" is the pullback of "u" by some continuous map formula_42. More precisely, pulling back the class "u" gives a bijection


title: Cohomology

text: for every space "X" with the homotopy type of a CW complex. Here formula_44 denotes the set of homotopy classes of continuous maps from "X" to "Y".


title: Cohomology

text: For example, the space formula_45 (defined up to homotopy equivalence) can be taken to be the circle formula_34. So the description above says that every element of formula_47 is pulled back from the class "u" of a point on formula_34 by some map formula_49.


title: Cohomology

text: There is a related description of the first cohomology with coefficients in any abelian group "A", say for a CW complex "X". Namely, formula_50 is in one-to-one correspondence with the set of isomorphism classes of Galois covering spaces of "X" with group "A", also called principal "A"-bundles over "X". For "X" connected, it follows that formula_50 is isomorphic to formula_52, where formula_53 is the fundamental group of "X". For example, formula_54 classifies the double covering spaces of "X", with the element formula_55 corresponding to the trivial double covering, the disjoint union of two copies of "X".


title: Cohomology

text: For example, let "X" be an oriented manifold, not necessarily compact. Then a closed oriented codimension-"i" submanifold "Y" of "X" (not necessarily compact) determines an element of "H"("X","R"), and a compact oriented "j"-dimensional submanifold "Z" of "X" determines an element of "H"("X","R"). The cap product ["Y"] ∩ ["Z"] ∈ "H"("X","R") can be computed by perturbing "Y" and "Z" to make them intersect transversely and then taking the class of their intersection, which is a compact oriented submanifold of dimension "j" − "i".


title: Cohomology

text: A closed oriented manifold "X" of dimension "n" has a fundamental class ["X"] in "H"("X","R"). The Poincaré duality isomorphism


title: Cohomology

text: Although cohomology is fundamental to modern algebraic topology, its importance was not seen for some 40 years after the development of homology. The concept of "dual cell structure", which Henri Poincaré used in his proof of his Poincaré duality theorem, contained the beginning of the idea of cohomology, but this was not seen until later.


title: Cohomology

text: There were various precursors to cohomology. In the mid-1920s, J. W. Alexander and Solomon Lefschetz founded intersection theory of cycles on manifolds. On a closed oriented "n"-dimensional manifold "M" an "i"-cycle and a "j"-cycle with nonempty intersection will, if in the general position, have as their intersection a ("i" + "j" − "n")-cycle. This leads to a multiplication of homology classes


title: Cohomology

text: Alexander had by 1930 defined a first notion of a cochain, by thinking of an "i"-cochain on a space "X" as a function on small neighborhoods of the diagonal in "X".


title: Cohomology

text: In 1931, Georges de Rham related homology and differential forms, proving de Rham's theorem. This result can be stated more simply in terms of cohomology.


title: Cohomology

text: In 1934, Lev Pontryagin proved the Pontryagin duality theorem; a result on topological groups. This (in rather special cases) provided an interpretation of Poincaré duality and Alexander duality in terms of group characters.


title: Cohomology

text: At a 1935 conference in Moscow, Andrey Kolmogorov and Alexander both introduced cohomology and tried to construct a cohomology product structure.


title: Cohomology

text: From 1936 to 1938, Hassler Whitney and Eduard Čech developed the cup product (making cohomology into a graded ring) and cap product, and realized that Poincaré duality can be stated in terms of the cap product. Their theory was still limited to finite cell complexes.


title: Cohomology

text: In 1944, Samuel Eilenberg overcame the technical limitations, and gave the modern definition of singular homology and cohomology.


title: Cohomology

text: In 1945, Eilenberg and Steenrod stated the axioms defining a homology or cohomology theory, discussed below. In their 1952 book, "Foundations of Algebraic Topology", they proved that the existing homology and cohomology theories did indeed satisfy their axioms.


title: Cohomology

text: In 1948 Edwin Spanier, building on work of Alexander and Kolmogorov, developed Alexander–Spanier cohomology.


title: Cohomology

text: Sheaf cohomology is a rich generalization of singular cohomology, allowing more general "coefficients" than simply an abelian group. For every sheaf of abelian groups "E" on a topological space "X", one has cohomology groups "H"("X","E") for integers "i". In particular, in the case of the constant sheaf on "X" associated with an abelian group "A", the resulting groups "H"("X","A") coincide with singular cohomology for "X" a manifold or CW complex (though not for arbitrary spaces "X"). Starting in the 1950s, sheaf cohomology has become a central part of algebraic geometry and complex analysis, partly because of the importance of the sheaf of regular functions or the sheaf of holomorphic functions.


title: Cohomology

text: Grothendieck elegantly defined and characterized sheaf cohomology in the language of homological algebra. The essential point is to fix the space "X" and think of sheaf cohomology as a functor from the abelian category of sheaves on "X" to abelian groups. Start with the functor taking a sheaf "E" on "X" to its abelian group of global sections over "X", "E"("X"). This functor is left exact, but not necessarily right exact. Grothendieck defined sheaf cohomology groups to be the right derived functors of the left exact functor "E" ↦ "E"("X").


title: Cohomology

text: That definition suggests various generalizations. For example, one can define the cohomology of a topological space "X" with coefficients in any complex of sheaves, earlier called hypercohomology (but usually now just "cohomology"). From that point of view, sheaf cohomology becomes a sequence of functors from the derived category of sheaves on "X" to abelian groups.


title: Cohomology

text: In a broad sense of the word, "cohomology" is often used for the right derived functors of a left exact functor on an abelian category, while "homology" is used for the left derived functors of a right exact functor. For example, for a ring "R", the Tor groups Tor("M","N") form a "homology theory" in each variable, the left derived functors of the tensor product "M"⊗"N" of "R"-modules. Likewise, the Ext groups Ext("M","N") can be viewed as a "cohomology theory" in each variable, the right derived functors of the Hom functor Hom("M","N").


title: Cohomology

text: Sheaf cohomology can be identified with a type of Ext group. Namely, for a sheaf "E" on a topological space "X", "H"("X","E") is isomorphic to Ext(Z, "E"), where Z denotes the constant sheaf associated with the integers Z, and Ext is taken in the abelian category of sheaves on "X".


title: Cohomology

text: There are numerous machines built for computing the cohomology of algebraic varieties. The simplest case being the determination of cohomology for smooth projective varieties over a field of characteristic formula_61. Tools from Hodge theory, called Hodge structures help give computations of cohomology of these types of varieties (with the addition of more refined information). In the simplest case the cohomology of a smooth hypersurface in formula_62 can be determined from the degree of the polynomial alone.


title: Cohomology

text: When considering varieties over a finite field, or a field of characteristic formula_63, more powerful tools are required because the classical definitions of homology/cohomology break down. This is because varieties over finite fields will only be a finite set of points. Grothendieck came up with the idea for a Grothendieck topology and used sheaf cohomology over the etale topology to define the cohomology theory for varieties over a finite field. Using the étale topology for a variety over a field of characteristic formula_63 one can construct formula_65-adic cohomology for formula_66. This is defined as


title: Cohomology

text: then there is an equality of dimensions for the Betti cohomology of formula_69 and the formula_65-adic cohomology of formula_71 whenever the variety is smooth over both fields. In addition to these cohomology theories there are other cohomology theories called Weil cohomology theories which behave similarly to singular cohomology. There is a conjectured theory of motives which underlie all of the Weil cohomology theories.


title: Cohomology

text: Another useful computational tool is the blowup sequence. Given a codimension formula_72 subscheme formula_73 there is a Cartesian square


title: Cohomology

text: There are various ways to define cohomology for topological spaces (such as singular cohomology, Čech cohomology, Alexander–Spanier cohomology or sheaf cohomology). (Here sheaf cohomology is considered only with coefficients in a constant sheaf.) These theories give different answers for some spaces, but there is a large class of spaces on which they all agree. This is most easily understood axiomatically: there is a list of properties known as the Eilenberg–Steenrod axioms, and any two constructions that share those properties will agree at least on all CW complexes. There are versions of the axioms for a homology theory as well as for a cohomology theory. Some theories can be viewed as tools for computing singular cohomology for special topological spaces, such as simplicial cohomology for simplicial complexes, cellular cohomology for CW complexes, and de Rham cohomology for smooth manifolds.


title: Cohomology

text: One of the Eilenberg–Steenrod axioms for a cohomology theory is the dimension axiom: if "P" is a single point, then "H"("P") = 0 for all "i" ≠ 0. Around 1960, George W. Whitehead observed that it is fruitful to omit the dimension axiom completely: this gives the notion of a generalized homology theory or a generalized cohomology theory, defined below. There are generalized cohomology theories such as K-theory or complex cobordism that give rich information about a topological space, not directly accessible from singular cohomology. (In this context, singular cohomology is often called "ordinary cohomology".)


title: Cohomology

text: By definition, a generalized homology theory is a sequence of functors "h" (for integers "i") from the category of CW-pairs ("X", "A") (so "X" is a CW complex and "A" is a subcomplex) to the category of abelian groups, together with a natural transformation called the boundary homomorphism (here "h"("A") is a shorthand for "h"("A",∅)). The axioms are:


title: Cohomology

text: The axioms for a generalized cohomology theory are obtained by reversing the arrows, roughly speaking. In more detail, a generalized cohomology theory is a sequence of contravariant functors "h" (for integers "i") from the category of CW-pairs to the category of abelian groups, together with a natural transformation called the boundary homomorphism (writing "h"("A") for "h"("A",∅)). The axioms are:


title: Cohomology

text: A spectrum determines both a generalized homology theory and a generalized cohomology theory. A fundamental result by Brown, Whitehead, and Adams says that every generalized homology theory comes from a spectrum, and likewise every generalized cohomology theory comes from a spectrum. This generalizes the representability of ordinary cohomology by Eilenberg–MacLane spaces.


title: Cohomology

text: A subtle point is that the functor from the stable homotopy category (the homotopy category of spectra) to generalized homology theories on CW-pairs is not an equivalence, although it gives a bijection on isomorphism classes; there are nonzero maps in the stable homotopy category (called phantom maps) that induce the zero map between homology theories on CW-pairs. Likewise, the functor from the stable homotopy category to generalized cohomology theories on CW-pairs is not an equivalence. It is the stable homotopy category, not these other categories, that has good properties such as being triangulated.


title: Cohomology

text: If one prefers homology or cohomology theories to be defined on all topological spaces rather than on CW complexes, one standard approach is to include the axiom that every weak homotopy equivalence induces an isomorphism on homology or cohomology. (That is true for singular homology or singular cohomology, but not for sheaf cohomology, for example.) Since every space admits a weak homotopy equivalence from a CW complex, this axiom reduces homology or cohomology theories on all spaces to the corresponding theory on CW complexes.


title: Cohomology

text: A cohomology theory "E" is said to be multiplicative if formula_95 has the structure of a graded ring for each space "X". In the language of spectra, there are several more precise notions of a ring spectrum, such as an "E" ring spectrum, where the product is commutative and associative in a strong sense.


title: Cohomology

text: Cohomology theories in a broader sense (invariants of other algebraic or geometric structures, rather than of topological spaces) include:


title: Nevermind It's an Interview

text: Nevermind, It's an Interview is the only officially released interview CD of American grunge band Nirvana. It was only a promotional release and was never commercially available. Released in limited-edition form worldwide in 1992 by Geffen Records, written, produced and engineered at WFNX Boston by Kurt St. Thomas and Troy Smith, (authors of "Nirvana: The Chosen Rejects", (St. Martin's Press, 2004). The original interview sessions were recorded by St. Thomas the night of Nirvana's first appearance on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" in 1992. It contains over an hour of audio interview with live and studio recordings. The reason for its production was for radio stations world-wide to have a Nirvana interview to play because at that time the band was so popular that it was not possible for them to visit all the radio stations that were playing their music. Copies of the CD are rare and have become collectors items. However, for a limited time, the entire CD was included at the end of the iTunes version of "With the Lights Out", Nirvana's posthumous box set. It is listed as:


title: Nevermind It's an Interview

text: All songs are incomplete unless otherwise noted. The live versions of "Drain You" and "School" were released on some versions of the "Come as You Are" single. The back cover reads: "Kurt St Thomas, Music director of WFNX, Boston, speaks with Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl about life in Nirvana, circa 1992."


title: Wilhelm von Homburg

text: Norbert Grupe (born August 25, 1940 – March 10, 2004), better known outside Germany by his stage name Wilhelm von Homburg, was a German boxer, actor, and professional wrestler known for his villainous supporting roles in various high-profile films of the 1980s and 1990s, including Vigo the Carpathian in "Ghostbusters II", the henchman James in "Die Hard," and Souteneur in Werner Herzog's "Stroszek."


title: Wilhelm von Homburg

text: Norbert Grupe was born in Berlin on August 25, 1940. He was the son of Richard Grupe (1915 - August 5, 1988), who worked as a baker in Nazi Germany, and later become both a championship-winning boxer and a local policeman who worked at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Richard would later say of this period, "I was never a Nazi. I never joined the party. I was not in the Hitler Youth...I was a pastryman...I have no much luck with the Jewish people. But I never hated them. Never hated them. I'm very sorry for what Hitler did to the Jewish people."


title: Wilhelm von Homburg

text: After the war, Richard boxed professionally from 1946 to 1952, earning a record of 26 wins (20 by knockout), 8 losses, and 6 draws. He then toured Europe as a wrestler. Later, Richard's first wife gave birth to Grupe's brother Winfried. Richard's second wife Ursula, much younger and closer in age to Grupe himself, gave birth to Grupe's sister, Rona. Ursula left the family five years later. According to Rona, Grupe exhibited a bitter jealousy toward Winfried, because Winfried's mother was a daily presence for him, whereas Grupe's absent mother would not even speak to him.


title: Wilhelm von Homburg

text: In his youth, Grupe worked as a meatpacker, stevedore, butcher, longshoreman, and a waiter. By the time he finished school, Grupe, who had begun trainining in boxing at age 10, had won several amateur boxing matches. Around 1960, Richard emigrated to the United States to further wrestling career, and Grupe, who stood at 6'3" and 227 pounds by this time, would soon follow, spending time at California's notable Venice weight pen, where he became acquainted with future film star Arnold Schwarzenegger. The father and son duo would don Viking costumes, with which they were billed as the tag-team by the name of The Vikings, wrestling at the Los Angeles Coliseum and Madison Square Garden. They subsequently changed their name to the Von Homburg Brothers, under which they performed as heels for less than a hundred dollars a night in total. Grupe thought his last name sounded too much like the word "groupie", and changed it to Prince Wilhelm von Homburg. He sometimes wore a monocle and German eagle. He would later regret using it in Hollywood, saying, "In an industry that was ruled by the Jews, it was really dumb to call myself 'von Homburg.' Who do they think that is? A Nazi nobleman." After their wrestling partnership ended, the father and son grew estranged.


title: Wilhelm von Homburg

text: Von Homburg switched careers to boxing in 1962, employing the showmanship and the boastful, cocky persona he had developed as a wrestler. He won 16 of 21 professional fights in the U.S., fighting throughout California as a light heavyweight before traveling across the U.S. and then his native Germany where his he wore fur coats, smoked cigars, and taunted referees and crowds in a way that stunned the normally sedate German boxing world. One reporter for "Der Spiegel" ranked Von Homburg as seventh in the world. He grew his blonde hair over his ears, for which he was nicknamed the "Beatle Boxer."


title: Wilhelm von Homburg

text: Von Homburg got his first championship match in 1966 against Piero del Papa for the EBU Regional Light Heavyweight title in Berlin. Homburg was disqualified in the eleventh round, after having knocked out Del Papa, because the referee declared a subtle head movement by Von Homburg to have been an illegal headbutt. The match would haunt Von Homburg for the rest of his life, and he was blame it on bias on the part of the referee, saying, "I was the best thing German boxing had back then, and then I had a 70-year-old Frenchman as the referee. We all know what the Germans did to his parents and his sister."


title: Wilhelm von Homburg

text: Throughout his boxing career, von Homburg appeared in bit roles in various films and television shows, usually billed as Wilhelm von Homburg. In "The Promoter", the April 25, 1964 episode of "Gunsmoke" for example, he played a boxer named Otto who is offered a large bribe to throw a fight.


title: Wilhelm von Homburg

text: After losing his next three fights, von Homburg retired from boxing in 1970 at age 30, and went to live in St. Pauli Kiez, a red-light district of Hamburg, developing a reputation in that area's underground, where he associated with pimps and Hells Angels, and had engaged in a number of affairs with both men and women. He also used drugs and alcohol to excess.


title: Wilhelm von Homburg

text: After spending some years in prison, von Homburg attempted to pursue an acting career in earnest. German director Werner Herzog, who had seen him box in his youth, cast him as a bullying pimp in his 1977 film "Stroszek". Herzog commented, "The Prince was so clear and intelligent and radiated, at the same time, a feeling of danger that absolutely terrified me. He was almost like a German Mike Tyson." A decade later, Von Homburg was cast as James, one of Hans Gruber's henchmen in the 1988 action thriller "Die Hard", who dies after Bruce Willis' character detonates plastic explosives down an elevator shaft. Von Homburg's biggest role came at age 50, when he was cast as the primary villain in the 1989 comedy sequel "Ghostbusters II", playing Vigo the Carpathian, a despotic sorcerer whose soul is released from a medieval painting. The character's full name was Vigo Von Homburg Deutschendorf, which paid homage to the name he had chosen as a performer. The film was released less than a year after Von Homburg's father Richard died, though he had not reconciled with his father or sister. His last major role was as Charles Macum Diggs, a vegetative ex-boxer in "Diggstown", which was a commercial flop.


title: Wilhelm von Homburg

text: Von Homburg spent the last years of his life effectively homeless, alternating between sleeping at a YMCA, in the homes of friends, or in his van. He developed prostate cancer, and following its metastasis to his pelvis, spine, and brain, he went to the home of his friend Walter Staudinger, where he spent his final days.


title: Get the Party Started

text: "Get the Party Started" is a song by American singer Pink, released on October 16, 2001, as the lead single from her second album, "Missundaztood" (2001). It received positive reviews and became an international success and reached the top ten in many countries, peaking at number one in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Romania, Spain, and the Walloon region of Belgium. The song was Pink's biggest-selling song at that time.


title: Get the Party Started

text: In 2003, "Q" ranked the track at number 185 in their list of the "1001 Best Songs Ever". About.com placed the song at number-one in their list of "The Top 100 Best Party Songs of All Time" in 2019.


title: Get the Party Started

text: The song was composed by former 4 Non Blondes frontwoman Linda Perry. She said that the process of making the song was "so unlike me"; according to her, she was going through a "weird phase" during which she wanted to learn how to program drums. She programmed her first beat, picked up a bass guitar, and, in her words, "did what the beat was asking me to do." She decided to put "every wrong instrument" in the song, and consequently acquired a horn sample. "I was doing the music, the melody was already coming to me in what I wanted the song to be," she said. She finished the song by including in the song "every catch phrase you possibly could imagine", before laughing at the realization that she had written a potential hit single and her first dance song. "You create something in your bedroom or your house, and it's just a fun thing that you're doing," she said. "Then all of a sudden, you hear that song that you started in your house, and it's on the radio. And people are now acknowledging it. It's just trippy." In 2019, Perry revealed that she had written the song for Madonna, who turned it down.


title: Get the Party Started

text: AllMusic highlighted the song and added: "This record bubbles over with imagination, as hooky pop songs like the title track rub shoulders with glitzy dancefloor anthems like "Get the Party Started." Jim Farber was favorable: "The single "Get the Party Started" has the tricky synth hook of a perfect new-wave hit from the '80s." "NME" was less positive, saying it "displays the kind of clod-hopping attention-seeking on single 'Get the Party Started' that makes you assume you're listening to a Geri Halliwell record." Jason Thompson described this song and praised: "the dance inducing "Get the Party Started". Again, even this isn't really in the mold of current dance tracks. Instead, it feels more like the kinds of grooves that were coming out in the early Nineties, when alt-rock was influencing the discos as well as the college charts. In fact, it sounds a little like Apollo Smile who had an album out back in '91 or so. "Get the Party Started" also echoes the good time vibe that other hits like Deee-Lite's "Groove Is in the Heart" had that won over many fans. This track should do just the same thing. It did for me, anyway."


title: Get the Party Started

text: Slant Magazine called this song "retro-dipped dance-pop." Sputnikmusic marked it as a highlight and added: "It is not all slow and serious going though, as 1st single 'Get The Party Started' proves. As the song title suggests, this is the dance-oriented party-starter that the artist's debut album lacked." "Stylus" magazine called the song "near perfection."


title: Get the Party Started

text: "Get the Party Started" reached number four on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 on December 29, 2001, becoming one of Pink's biggest solo hits in the US with "Most Girls" also reaching number four on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in 2000 and "So What", "Raise Your Glass", and "Just Give Me a Reason" reaching number one in 2008, 2010, and 2013 respectively, and "Fuckin' Perfect" that reached number two in America. The single's success was spurred by heavy airplay in the US, which prompted the song to also peak at number four on Billboard's Radio Songs chart. The song peaked at number two in the UK, where it was certified platinum for sales and streams exceeding 600,000 units. The song reached number one in Australia and number two in many European countries, including Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland.


title: Get the Party Started

text: "Get the Party Started" is certified platinum in Australia, Canada, Norway, and the UK and gold in Austria, Germany, France, Sweden, and Switzerland. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2003 in the category of "Best Female Pop Vocal Performance", which it lost to Norah Jones's "Don't Know Why". It won the award for "Favorite Song" at the Kids' Choice Awards of 2002, and at the MTV Europe Music Awards of 2002, it won the award for "Best Song". "Get the Party Started" is often considered one of Pink's signature songs as she tends to finish her shows with this song in her encore section along with a ballad song such as "Nobody Knows" and "Glitter In The Air". In December, the song was listed as number 81 on "Rolling Stone"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Top Songs of the 2000s.


title: Get the Party Started

text: The music video was shot by director Dave Meyers in Los Angeles. It was filmed from September 22 to 24, 2001. The video uses an abbreviated version of the song, cutting out the last chorus as well as the instrumentals. Perry is seen as a bartender.


title: Get the Party Started

text: In the video, Pink is getting ready to go out, trying on different outfits. One of her friends picks her up, and they drive in a car bobbing their heads to the music. However, the car runs out of fuel, so they get out and steal two skateboards from two boys. Pink falls off her skateboard because men in a car are whistling at her. The women arrive at the club but are refused entry, so to get in they use a scaffold to reach the top of the building. Inside the club, Pink changes her clothes and starts to party; in the end Pink dances with two other dancers (Kevin Federline and Georvohn Lambert).


title: Get the Party Started

text: The video was nominated at the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards for "Best Pop Video" and won the awards for "Best Female Video" and "Best Dance Video".


title: Get the Party Started

text: Pink teamed up with Redman and Rockwilder for a remix of "Get the Party Started" using elements of the Eurythmics song "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)". The remix, titled "Get the Party Started/Sweet Dreams", was released as a single only in France, where it reached number four and was certified gold. Pink performed the remix during her I'm Not Dead Tour in 2006 and 2007.


title: Get the Party Started

text: Shirley Bassey recorded a cover for a spy-themed 2006 Marks & Spencer Christmas television advertising campaign. Her version became a cult hit and was included on her 2007 album, also titled "Get the Party Started". "The Guardian" wrote, "Bassey is the only singer alive who could take the bouncing, enthusiastic R&B of the original Get the Party Started and turn it into a grand, imperious swoop worthy of a Bond theme; it's a terrific cover version, even if it perhaps didn't quite merit the album attached to it."


title: Get the Party Started

text: On January 13, 2008, Bassey's version was used in the opening sequence to the ITV1 series "Dancing on Ice". It was also used in the promo for Cycle 4 of "Australia's Next Top Model", and Bassey's version charted at number 47 in the UK and ended at the Billboard Year-End Charts at number forty-three in the Hot Dance Club Plays Tracks of the year, having peaked at number 3 in April 2008. The track was used again in 2010 for the opening credits of "". The track was also used for 2015 commercial of Honda Stepwgn.


title: Australian white ibis

text: The Australian white ibis (Threskiornis molucca) is a wading bird of the ibis family, Threskiornithidae. It is widespread across much of Australia. It has a predominantly white plumage with a bare, black head, long downcurved bill and black legs. While it is closely related to the African sacred ibis, the Australian white ibis is a native Australian bird – contrary to urban myth, it is not a feral species introduced to Australia by people, and it does not come from Egypt.


title: Australian white ibis

text: Historically rare in urban areas, the Australian white ibis has established in urban areas of the east coast in increasing numbers since the late 1970s; it is now commonly seen in Wollongong, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide (where it mostly is in Mawson Lakes wetlands), Darwin, the Gold Coast, Brisbane and Townsville. In recent years, the bird has also become increasingly common in Perth, Western Australia, and surrounding towns in south-western Australia. Populations have disappeared from natural breeding areas such as the Macquarie Marshes in northern New South Wales. Management plans have been introduced to control problematic urban populations in Sydney.


title: Australian white ibis

text: Due to its increasing presence in the urban environment and its habit of rummaging in garbage, the species has acquired a variety of colloquial names such as "tip turkey" and "bin chicken", and in recent years has become an icon of Australia's popular culture, regarded with glee by some and passionate revulsion by others.


title: Australian white ibis

text: It was initially described by Georges Cuvier in 1829 as "Ibis molucca". It is considered part of a superspecies complex with the sacred ibis ("T. aethiopicus") of Africa, and the black-headed ibis ("T. melanocephalus") of Asia. Its status in the complex has vacillated over the years. Many older guidebooks referred to the bird as a species, "T. molucca", until a comprehensive review of plumage patterns by Holyoak in 1970. Holyoak noted the three species' similarities and that the Australian taxon resembled "T. aethiopicus" in adult plumage and "T. melanocephalus" in juvenile plumage. He proposed that they all be considered part of a single species, "T. aethiopicus". This was generally accepted by the scientific community until Lowe and Richards's assessment of plumage in 1991. They again recommended the recognition of "molucca" at species level. This was followed by a chromosome study, which highlighted each of the three species having a different karyotype. The Australian white ibis has been considered a full species by most authorities since then.


title: Australian white ibis

text: The Australian white ibis is a fairly large ibis species, around long and has a bald black head and neck and a long black downcurved beak, measuring over in the male, and under in the female. There is some sexual dimorphism in size, as the slightly heavier male weighs compared to the female. As a comparison, the American white ibis generally attains in weight. The body plumage is white, although it may become brown-stained. Inner secondary plumes are displayed as lacy black "tail" feathers. The upper tail becomes yellow when the bird is breeding. The legs and feet are dark and red skin is visible on the underside of the wing. Immature birds have shorter bills. The head and neck are feathered in juveniles.


title: Australian white ibis

text: The Australian white ibis reaches sexual maturity in three years, and can reach twenty-eight years of age.


title: Australian white ibis

text: The Australian white ibis is widespread in eastern, northern and south-western Australia. It occurs in marshy wetlands, often near open grasslands and has become common in Australian east-coast city parks and rubbish dumps in the urban areas of Wollongong, Sydney, Perth, the Gold Coast, Brisbane and Townsville. Historically, it was rare in urban areas – the first visits were noted after drought drove birds eastwards in the late 1970s, and there were no breeding records in Sydney until the 1980s.


title: Australian white ibis

text: The Macquarie Marshes in north-western New South Wales used to be one of the main breeding areas of the bird, with 11,000 nests reported in 1998. However, since 2000, none have been reported breeding there. The species is absent from Tasmania.


title: Australian white ibis

text: The species has been able to colonise urban areas by reducing its fear response when in close proximity to humans, and by significantly widening its suite of food items to include human refuse - strategies that other closely-related species such as the straw-necked ibis and the spoonbills have not replicated.


title: Australian white ibis

text: Questions surrounding the origins of recent highly urbanised and closely human-habituated populations of the species are complicated by the establishment of free flying exhibit flocks of formerly captive birds at a number of zoos and wildlife parks, including Sydney's Taronga Zoo, which first acquired birds for this purpose around 1971. A 1973 ABC TV report noted Taronga's by then well-established "liberty flock" was breeding locally, unlike natural populations, which at that time were only known to fleetingly visit the urban area and not breed there.


title: Australian white ibis

text: The resident Taronga flock nested in exotic Canary Island date palms, and was notably very closely habituated to people; approaching them at close quarters, feeding from rubbish bins and scavenging food from outdoor dining areas. These previously undocumented behaviours became closely associated with the urban Sydney flocks that emerged from around 1980 onwards, directly across the harbour in the Royal Botanic Gardens and the Sydney CBD, and further afield in the Centennial Parklands.


title: Australian white ibis

text: The relationship between birds originating from the Taronga flock and any influx of inland birds into Sydney is poorly known, but it is speculated that human-habituated flocks originating from the zoo may have encouraged some visiting flocks to stay in Sydney, with the two populations likely merging to some degree. Resident Sydney birds may have influenced newcomers fleeing from inland drought to adapt to new food sources in the city and to accept close proximity to humans.


title: Australian white ibis

text: Other free-flying exhibit populations were similarly established at Healesville Sanctuary in Victoria and at Tidbinbilla in the ACT, both of which mirrored the Taronga example by appearing to serve as population nucleation points. Healesville birds also seeded a free-flying population at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary in Queensland.


title: Australian white ibis

text: The urban population further increased after a further period of inland drought in 1998. The first big colony set up in the Sydney suburb of Bankstown and started to cause anxiety in the local community. It is estimated the colony was the largest outside the Macquarie Marshes, their natural breeding wetland in inland NSW.


title: Australian white ibis

text: There has been debate in recent years over whether to consider them a pest or a possibly endangered species. Birds in tourist areas of Sydney, such as Darling Harbour, the Royal Botanic Gardens, and Centennial Park, have been a problem due to their strong smell. Populations in the latter two areas have been culled.


title: Australian white ibis

text: The birds have also come to be regarded as a problem species in Victoria as a result of their scavenging activities, scattering rubbish from tips and bins in the process. They are even known to snatch sandwiches from picnickers. Such behaviour, together with their propensity to build nests in "inappropriate" places, and competition with captive animals, led to surplus birds being relocated from Healesville Sanctuary to Sale. However, the birds returned in a few days.


title: Australian white ibis

text: The Australian white ibis' range of food includes both terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates and human scraps. The most favoured foods are crayfish and mussels, which the bird obtains by digging with its long bill. Ibises have also been observed to eat cane toads by "flicking" them about to make them secrete their defensive toxin, then washing the toad in a nearby water source before consuming it. Researchers called this a learned behaviour "observed in multiple different regions". Although scientists do not think that the toxin affects most birds, they believe birds avoid it because of its "awful" taste.


title: Australian white ibis

text: Breeding season varies with the location within Australia, generally August to November in the south, and February to May, after the wet season, in the north. The nest is a shallow dish-shaped platform of sticks, grasses or reeds, located in trees, generally near a body of water such as a river, swamp or lake. Ibises commonly nest near other waterbirds such as egrets, herons, spoonbills or cormorants. Two to three dull white eggs are laid measuring 65 mm × 44 mm. The clutch is then incubated for 21–23 days. Hatchlings are altricial, that is, they are naked and helpless at birth, and take 48 days to fledge.


title: Australian white ibis

text: The ibis is fairly common and is seen in groups of up to 30 birds along roads, on beaches and in the forest. It also visits villages where it forages with the domestic chickens. It feeds on the ground on invertebrates. When breeding, it nests in small colonies in forest trees and on islands in Lake Tegano.


title: Dave the Barbarian

text: Dave the Barbarian is an American animated television series created by Doug Langdale for Disney Channel. The show centers on a barbarian named Dave and his friends and family, who go on surreal Medieval-themed adventures. The series premiered on January 23, 2004 and ended on January 22, 2005, with a total of one season with 21 episodes.


title: Dave the Barbarian

text: The series takes place in the kingdom of Udrogoth during the Middle Ages. It centers on Dave (voiced by Danny Cooksey), a powerful yet cowardly barbarian who lives with his fashionable yet self-centered older sister Candy (Erica Luttrell) and feisty younger sister Fang (Tress MacNeille). His parents, Throktar and Glimia, are the King and Queen, but are away "fighting evil" across the world (though they sometimes communicate via a magic crystal ball or cauldron), and have left Candy in charge of the kingdom as Princess Regent while Dave is supposed to defend the kingdom (since he is the biggest). Together the three siblings, along with their gluttonous and mildly incompetent "wizard" uncle Oswidge, are left to run and protect the kingdom from the villainous yet dimwitted Dark Lord Chuckles the Silly Piggy (Paul Rugg).


title: Dave the Barbarian

text: There is a Narrator, referred to either as "the Narrator" or "the Storyteller", voiced by Jeff Bennett. He is able to talk to the characters of the show, and vice versa, which breaks the fourth wall to the extent where he was once captured by Dark Lord Chuckles the Silly Piggy and was forced to tell the story according to his kidnapper's commands.


title: Dave the Barbarian

text: The show was created and written by Doug Langdale. After premiering on Disney in 2004, it began broadcasting on Toon Disney a year later. In Latin America, the show was broadcast on Jetix.


title: Dave the Barbarian

text: Much like its predecessors "Hägar the Horrible", "The Flintstones" and the short-lived "The Roman Holidays", "Dave the Barbarian" juxtaposes both the ancient and modern. Candy, for example, shops in the local mall and uses the crystal ball for online shopping sprees.


title: Dave the Barbarian

text: Occasionally, the series breaks the fourth wall with a character complaining about a plot, directly addressing the audience, or communicating to the narrator. Characters can sometimes be offended by how the narrator describes them, including Oswidge in "Sorcerer Material." In "The Maddening Sprite of the Stump," the show's narrator skips over a fight scene, asking viewers to imagine an epic battle and explaining that "a low budget show" like "Dave the Barbarian" did not have the expenses to animate such a scene. In "A Pig's Story," the series antagonist realizes the show's narration leads to his losses, so he types favorable situations and hypnotizes the Storyteller into reading the voice-over, culminating in a theme song for the antagonist; ultimately, the narrator's laryngitis makes him lose his voice and foil the evil plan.


title: Dave the Barbarian

text: The series was broadcast internationally, including on the Family Channel in Canada, on STS in Russia, on Disney Cinemagic in the United Kingdom, on Jetix in Latin America, on MBC 3 in Arabia, on SIC in Portugal, and on Super RTL in Germany.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Jelena Dokic (; ; born 12 April 1983) is an Australian tennis coach, commentator, writer, and former professional tennis player. Her highest ranking as a tennis player was world No. 4, in August 2002. She won WTA Tour events on all surfaces during her career.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: In the 1999 Wimbledon Championships the 16-year-old Dokic achieved one of the biggest upsets in tennis history, beating Martina Hingis 6–2, 6–0. This remains the only time the women's world No. 1 has ever lost to a qualifier at Wimbledon. Dokic went on to reach the quarterfinals of that competition, only her second Grand Slam championship.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Dokic rapidly ascended through the world rankings after her Wimbledon breakthrough, but her time in the world elite was beset by off-court struggles. Her relationship with her outspoken father and coach Damir Dokić, on whose advice she switched allegiance to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in November 2000, was the subject of much media speculation over many years. She switched back to Australia in 2005, and accused her father of physical and mental abuse in her 2017 autobiography "Unbreakable".


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Dokic made a serious return to tennis in 2008 and finished 2009 back in the world top 100, but thereafter struggled badly with form and injuries, and ceased playing professionally in 2014.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Jelena Dokić was born in Osijek, SR Croatia, SFR Yugoslavia to a Serb father Damir Dokić and a Croat mother, Ljiljana (née Podnar). She has a younger brother, Savo, eight years her junior. Her family lived in Osijek until June 1991, when they decided to leave due to the political instability and wars. They settled in Sombor, Serbia, for a short time and emigrated to Australia in 1994. There they lived in Fairfield, a suburb of Sydney, where Dokić (later Dokic) attended Fairfield High School. She has spoken of growing up in poverty, and at one time (after the family left Croatia for Serbia) they lived in a shed infested with rats.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: In 1998, she won the US Open girls singles title and the French Open doubles with Kim Clijsters, ending the season ranked world No. 1 in the International Tennis Federation junior singles rankings and world No. 7 in doubles. She was an Australian Institute of Sport scholarship holder.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Dokic started the year by teaming up with Mark Philippoussis to win the Hopman Cup title. Until 2016, it was Australia's lone victory at the event. She then received a wildcard into the Australian Open, losing to world No. 1 Martina Hingis in two sets. At Wimbledon, Dokic made her professional breakthrough. As a qualifier, Dokic caused an upset, defeating world No. 1 Hingis in the first round in straight sets. Ranked No. 129 at the time, she was the lowest-ranked player to have defeated the top seed in a Grand Slam tournament during the Open era. She also defeated ninth-seeded Mary Pierce in straight sets before losing in three to Alexandra Stevenson in the quarterfinals. Dokic also reached her first WTA doubles final with Amanda Coetzer in Tokyo. During 1999, she jumped 298 spots, finishing the year at world No. 43.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Dokic was defeated in the first round of the Australian Open by Rita Kuti-Kis of Hungary. After the match, Dokic said, "I lost to a player who has never been a player and, I guess, probably never will be." During the spring clay court season, Dokic reached the quarterfinals of the Tier I events in Hilton Head, South Carolina and Rome (upsetting Venus Williams en route), as well as earning Fed Cup victories over Kim Clijsters, Anna Kournikova, and Sandrine Testud respectively. However, Dokic lost in the second round at the French Open.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Dokic's successes at Wimbledon continued; she lost in the semifinals to Lindsay Davenport. She reached the fourth round of the US Open, where she lost to Serena Williams after holding two set points in the first-set tiebreaker. At the 2000 Summer Olympics, representing Australia, she lost to Monica Seles in the bronze medal match. In doubles, she teamed with Rennae Stubbs, but lost in the second round. Dokic finished the year at world No. 26.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Beginning with the Australian Open, she began playing for Yugoslavia. Her father, Damir, claimed irregularities in the draw after her first-round loss to Lindsay Davenport and was banned from the tournament due to abusive behaviour. Damir later said, "I think the draw is fixed just for her". After the Australian Open, her family moved to the United States. In May, she won her first singles title in the Rome Masters, defeating Amélie Mauresmo in the final 7–6, 6–1. Later that year in doubles, she teamed with Conchita Martínez to reach the final of the French Open, where they were defeated by Virginia Ruano Pascual and Paola Suárez in straight sets.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Later that year, she reached five finals, winning two titles, in Tokyo (defeating former world No. 1 Arantxa Sánchez Vicario), and the Kremlin Cup (defeating Elena Dementieva). She also won her second title in doubles in Linz, with Nadia Petrova, and qualified for the WTA Tour Championships in singles, reaching the quarterfinals. She finished the year at world No. 8. The Yugoslav Olympic Committee declared her its athlete of the year for 2001.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Dokic reached the final of the Open Gaz de France, where she was forced to hand a walkover to Venus Williams, after her first victory over Monica Seles a day earlier, due to a right thigh strain suffered in her win. In April, she won her fourth singles title in Sarasota, Florida, defeating Tatiana Panova in the final. At the Hamburg event, Dokic collected a straight-set win over Justine Henin, before having to retire in the semifinals. Dokic was unable to defend her Italian Open title, losing to 11th-seeded Anastasia Myskina in the third round.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: In Strasbourg, she reached her fifth final, losing to Silvia Farina Elia. At the French Open, she was defeated by top-seeded Jennifer Capriati in the quarterfinals. Dokic then won her fifth career singles title in Birmingham, defeating Myskina in the final in two sets. She then lost in the fourth round at Wimbledon to Daniela Hantuchová.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: After Wimbledon, Dokic reached the final of the Acura Classic in San Diego, scoring her first win over Jennifer Capriati in a three-set match. In the final, she was defeated by Venus Williams. She also reached the semifinals of Los Angeles, losing to Chanda Rubin, and Montreal, notching a victory over Martina Hingis before retiring hurt against Capriati. Despite a loss to Elena Bovina in the second round of the US Open, Dokic reached her career-high singles ranking of world No. 4. She then reached the semifinals in Salvador, Bahia and Tokyo. Dokic again qualified for the WTA Tour Championships, losing in the quarterfinals to Serena Williams. She finished the year ranked world No. 9 in singles.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: In doubles, Dokic won titles in Sarasota (with Elena Likhovtseva), Los Angeles (with Kim Clijsters), and Linz (with Nadia Petrova), as well as reaching the finals of Moscow and Zürich (both with Petrova). This success resulted in her career-high doubles ranking of world No. 10.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: In 2003, Dokic hired Borna Bikić from Croatia to replace her father as her trainer. She played 30 events, reaching one final, one semifinal, and seven quarterfinals. At Wimbledon she narrowly lost in the third round 4–6, 4–6 to a 16-year-old Maria Sharapova. At Zürich, she beat the then-world No. 1 player Clijsters, but lost to Henin in the final. She and Petrova also reached a final in doubles in Rome. She played in the 2004 Fed Cup for the Serbia and Montenegro team and achieved two wins.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: In mid-2004, Dokic returned to her family in Serbia to attempt a reconciliation. In November 2005, after a turbulent period of 4–5 months during which she canceled all her tennis commitments and not even her family knew her whereabouts, she returned to Australia proclaiming, "I am an Australian, I feel like an Australian and I want to play for Australia again." She later identified her switch to Yugoslavia as the biggest regret of her career, and said her father was subjecting her to extreme physical and mental abuse at the time he made the decision for her.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Representing Australia for the first time in five years, Dokic received a wildcard into the Auckland Open in Auckland, but lost her first-round match to Julia Schruff, hitting 51 unforced errors and 28 double faults. Dokic then earned a wildcard berth at the Australian Open after winning the wildcard playoff. She held a match point on her opponent Virginie Razzano's serve and hit a forehand winner that caught the line, only to have the umpire rule the ball out. She went on to lose the match, hitting over 70 unforced errors.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Later that year, Dokic played in the qualifying tournament for Wimbledon, where she received a wildcard but suffered a three-set loss to Alexandra Stevenson. Under the guidance of new coach Nikola Pilić, after over three months away from the tour due to injury, Dokic qualified for a $10k tournament and reached the semifinals of the main draw before losing to Astrid Besser. In November 2006, Dokic denied reports from her father that she had been kidnapped by her boyfriend, Tin Bikić.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: In her interview, she said she would not play in the 2007 Australian Open because she was not ready and her aim was to get back into the top 30. Shortly after, Dokic left the Nikola Pilić tennis academy. She was due to sign a contract to be in the academy for a year, but instead returned to Borna Bikić, her coach. Dokic said she was not satisfied with the contract Pilić's Academy offered her. After withdrawing from several ITF events in the early 2007, Dokic lost in the early rounds of two $10k events in Rome. She then continued to withdraw from events. Back in Australia on 17 October, Dokic released a statement through Tennis Australia that she would use their facilities in an attempt to make a comeback.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Dokic said she had not felt "within herself" to play during 2007 but was now ready to put in the hard work necessary to get back to the top. She cited Mary Pierce, Jennifer Capriati, and Andre Agassi as inspirational figures for her goal of reaching the highest echelons of tennis once more. Dokic's long-awaited return to tennis came during the Australian Open wildcard playoff, where she was hoping to earn a wildcard into the first Grand Slam tournament of 2008. She emerged from the round-robin stage with a 3–0 record before retiring in her quarterfinal match while trailing 6–3, 3–1 due to a thigh strain.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Dokic received a wildcard for the qualifications of the 2008 Hobart International and won four matches to reach the second round of the main draw, where she retired in her match against Flavia Pennetta due to an ankle injury. She received a qualifying wildcard into the Australian Open, where she lost in the second round. After a three-month layoff, Dokic finally returned to action at the Morocco Open in Fes, where she qualified but lost in the first round to Gréta Arn. She then entered the following week in a $25k tournament in Florence, Italy, and won, saving two match points against Mirjana Lučić in the quarterfinals and defeating seventh-seeded Lucie Hradecká in the final. A week later, Dokic continued her winning streak by capturing the $25k tournament in Caserta, Italy.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: She was then offered a wildcard to the Internationaux de Strasbourg, where she lost in the first round to Swiss Timea Bacsinszky. In July, she won her third $25k in Darmstadt. Following a period with less successful results, Dokic took a temporary break, withdrawing from all ITF tournaments during September and early October. She returned in mid-October after being awarded a wildcard for qualifying into the Tier II Linz tournament. There, she won her first round match against Petra Martić before losing to world No. 63, Jill Craybas, in the second round.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: In December, Dokic again played the Australian Open Wildcard Playoff event, where she emerged from the round-robin stage with a 2–1 record, subsequently winning through to the final playoff, in which she had a tough match against Monika Wejnert, coming out a victor and earning a wildcard into the 2009 Australian Open. After the match, Dokic said:


title: Jelena Dokic

text: During the play-offs, Dokic said in a press conference that she had ambitions to play in the Fed Cup for Australia in 2009. Subsequently, she was awarded a main draw wildcard entry into the inaugural, 2009 Brisbane International event.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Dokic was knocked out of the Brisbane International by Amélie Mauresmo in straight sets in the first round. Dokic was up 5–3 in the first set before Mauresmo came back to win the tiebreak 11–9. In the second set, Dokic was down 3–5 but rallied to lead 6–5 before Mauresmo won the set in a tiebreak, 7–5. Dokic then received a qualification wildcard into the Hobart International but withdrew before her first match because of an Achilles tendon injury.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Dokic won her first round match at the Australian Open against Tamira Paszek of Austria. It was her first Grand Slam match win since 2003. She then defeated world No. 17, Anna Chakvetadze, in the second round, 6–4, 6–7, 6–3 and 11th-seeded Caroline Wozniacki in the third round. This was the first time she had reached the fourth round of the Australian Open. Dokic then advanced to the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam tournament for the first time since 2002 after defeating 29th-seeded Alisa Kleybanova. Dokic's run ended when she was defeated by Dinara Safina in a three-sets quarterfinal. Because of this tournament, her ranking improved to world No. 91.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: In an interview after her first-round win at the Australian Open, Dokic said that she still has no contact with her father, but is building relationships again with her mother and younger brother, and that she has been dating her boyfriend, Tin Bikić, for five years.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: In Fed Cup, Australia was in the Fed Cup Asia/Oceania Zone Group I. Dokic defeated all three of her opponents in straight sets, Lee Jin-a of Korea, Suchanun Viratprasert of Thailand, and Diane Hollands of New Zealand. Australia advanced into the World Group II Playoffs in April. At the Cellular South Cup in Memphis, Tennessee, she won two qualifying matches to reach the main draw, where she lost in the first round to top-seeded Wozniacki 1–6, 2–6 in 48 minutes.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Her next tournament was the Indian Wells Open, a Premier Mandatory event, where she lost to American Jill Craybas in the first round. Dokic received a wildcard for the main draw of another Premier Mandatory event, the Miami Open in Key Biscayne. She defeated Romanian Edina Gallovits in the first round before losing to 13th-seeded Wozniacki in the second round. Dokic withdrew from the MPS Group Championships in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida and the Family Circle Cup in Charleston, citing fatigue. Dokic then won the second singles rubber of Australia's World Group II Fed Cup quarterfinal tie against Switzerland in Mildura, Australia.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Originally scheduled to play in the Italian Open in early May, she instead appeared as the No. 1 seed in the $100k event at Bucharest but lost in the semifinals to Andrea Petkovic. She then participated on the Warsaw Open, which was the last WTA Premier event before the French Open but lost in the first round to qualifier Ioana Raluca Olaru. She then played the French Open. In the first round, she beat Karolina Šprem, her first win in the French Open since 2003. In the second round she played world No. 4, Elena Dementieva. She led by 6–2, 4–3 before retiring due to a lower back injury. She also played doubles, partnering with Alisa Kleybanova, they defeated Petra Cetkovská and Carla Suárez Navarro in the first round. They were scheduled to play world-number-ones in doubles, Cara Black and Liezel Huber, in the second round but withdrew because of the injury.


title: Jelena Dokic

text: Her injury forced her to miss Wimbledon warming up tournaments, but Dokic still appeared at Wimbledon. She lost against qualifier Tatjana Malek in the first round 6–3, 5–7, 2–6, after serving 16 double faults. Dokic was then diagnosed as suffering from glandular fever and had to withdraw from the Swedish Open in Båstad. She was ordered to rest for another fortnight and planned to get back on court on hard-court tournaments leading up to US Open. However, she did not make any appearance at the 2009 US Open Series.