title: Rajasthani people

text: In Maharashtra (an ancient "Maratha Desh"), Rajasthanis are mainly merchants and own large to medium size business houses. Maheshwaris are mainly Hindus (some are also Jains), who migrated from "Rājputāna" in the olden days. They usually worship all Gods and Goddesses along with their village deities.


title: Rajasthani people

text: The Seervi are a Jat sub-caste, living in the Marwar and Gaudwar region of Rajasthan. Later this caste is found in greater numbers in Jodhpur and Pali districts of Rajasthan.The sirvis are followers of Aai Mataji. The Servi Clan is considered to be in front of the Jat and Rajput caste. Servi is a Kshatriya farming caste. Which was separated from the Jats and Rajputs about 800 years ago and was living in the Marwar and Gaudwar region of Rajasthan.


title: Belkin

text: Belkin is an American consumer electronics and networking company headquartered in El Segundo, California. It produces mobile and computer connectivity devices and peripherals for consumer and commercial use. These include wireless chargers, power banks, charging cables, data cables, audio and video adapters, headphones, earbuds, smart speakers, screen protectors, surge protectors, Wi-Fi routers, smart home products, electronic device sanitizers, docking stations and data hubs, network switches, KVM switches and network cables.


title: Belkin

text: Belkin is the parent company for Linksys and WeMo branded products and services, as well as the smart home water management company, Phyn. In 2016, Belkin was acquired by Foxconn, the largest provider of electronics manufacturing services. It now operates as an independent subsidiary.


title: Belkin

text: While attending UCLA, Chet Pipkin, who was spending his time in local computer shops, saw the growing need for cables that would connect personal computers to new printers being released for home use. In the early 1980s, Chet Pipkin founded Belkin in his parents' home in Hawthorne, California, to manufacture computer cables for the new personal computer and tech accessory market. Pipkin began to sell computer-to-printer cables to local computer shops. As Pipkin's cable connector sales grew in Southern California, he recruited assembly help from his machinist father, brother and a handful of friends. In 1982, Pipkin left his university studies to focus on expanding the business.


title: Belkin

text: On January 1, 1983, Pipkin moved into a professional workplace and hired his first full-time employees. Belkin performed its cable manufacturing in the United States, which gave the company a fast turnaround for customers. In 1985, in addition to U.S. manufacturing, Belkin began contracting Asian factories to increase production for a global market. In the 1990s, Belkin added surge protectors and USB storage devices to its product line. In the early 2000s, Belkin expanded its product line to accommodate smartphone and tablet users with hardware accessories including chargers and connector cables.


title: Belkin

text: Belkin was privately run until 2002 when Summit Partners, a private equity firm, purchased a small stake in the company. Pipkin bought back those shares within the following years. In 2008, Belkin pivoted toward smartphone usage and designed new products for the smartphone accessory market.


title: Belkin

text: In 2012, Belkin launched the WeMo brand to produce smart home products. In March 2013, Belkin acquired Cisco Systems' Home Networking Business Unit, including the Linksys brand and product line. In 2016, Belkin, in a joint venture with water solutions company Uponor, formed Phyn, a home water management tech brand. In September 2018, Belkin was purchased by Foxconn, a Taiwanese multinational electronics firm and the largest provider of electronics manufacturing services, for $886 million.


title: Belkin

text: In January 2021, Pipkin stepped down from his role as CEO of Belkin to become the Executive Chairman of the Board. Senior Vice President and General Manager Steve Malony was announced as the new CEO.


title: Belkin

text: Belkin is headquartered in El Segundo, California. Previously, the head offices were in the neighboring southern California cities of Hawthorne and Compton. The company has offices in Russia, Indonesia, Macau, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Italy, Thailand, Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia, Greece, India, Dubai, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, Mexico, Denmark, Spain, France, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.


title: Belkin

text: From its founding in 1983 until 2012, the Belkin logo was simply the name Belkin. At Consumer Electronics Show in 2012, Belkin debuted a new logo that contains a human figure made with dots that match the dot of the "i" in Belkin. The branding team named the human figure PIP as an acronym for People-Inspired Products. In 2009, Belkin pledged to reduce 25 percent of the company's worldwide electricity consumption by 2017, and by 2018, Belkin had 37 percent reduction worldwide. Belkin made efficiency upgrades, including solar panels, EV charging stations in company parking lots, and motion sensor lighting in offices and distribution centers.


title: Belkin

text: WeMo was launched in 2012 to produce smart home products that can be synced with smart devices such as Apple Homekit, Nest and Google Home.


title: Belkin

text: In 2013, Belkin purchased Linksys, a Cisco network hardware company that specializes in wireless connectivity.


title: Belkin

text: In 2016, Phyn, a home water management tech brand, was created by Belkin in a joint venture with water solutions company Uponor.


title: Belkin

text: Between May 2013 and the end of the 2014 season, Belkin sponsored a Dutch professional cycling team, Belkin Pro Cycling Team. Belkin stepped in after the team formerly known as Rabobank lost their headline sponsor.


title: Belkin

text: Belkin is involved in the local Compton community through the ASAP (Advanced Surveillance and Protection Plan) program with the LASD (LA County Sheriff's Department) and the Everybody Wins reading program. Belkin supports Susan G. Komen for the Cure to fight breast cancer through its pink ribbon iPod cases that have helped raise $350,000 for the organization. In 2007, Belkin made a holiday donation to the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative.


title: Belkin

text: Belkin is a founding partner and an industry partner with Da Vinci Schools, a network of charter schools with the goal of "hands-on learning," to prepare students for college and careers. In 2015, Belkin began the Belkin Internship program for the Da Vinci Extension program in which Da Vinci students gain career experiences in their community.


title: Belkin

text: Belkin produced its first stereo cables and speaker wiring in 2002. It markets audio products that are compatible with new technology and devices, including digital audio adapters, speakers and headphones. At CES 2019, Belkin announced the company's first headphones line, RockStar, for iPhone and Android devices. The first of the line provided headphones that are attachable to an iPhone Lightning port. In 2020, Belkin released the Soundform True Wireless Earbuds and its first speaker, the Soundform Elite Hi-Fi Smart Speaker. The Soundform Elite, created in partnership with Devialet. The speaker was named Best Smart Speaker on "Rolling Stone"'s Top Product Essentials of 2020.


title: Belkin

text: Belkin also sells wall chargers, car chargers, charging stations, power banks, surge protectors, power strips, and wireless chargers for smartphones, tablets, smart watches, laptops, computers and other electronic devices.


title: Belkin

text: Belkin markets a range of cables for electronic devices, including charging cables, data cables, audio/video cables, cable adapters and network cables. In its inception, Belkin focused on cables and connectors for device pairings that were not easily available in the 1980s. It released the Hamlet cable, which connected the Apple IIc computer to non-Apple printers, in 1983. In 2016, Belkin released an iPhone-compatible adapter for simultaneous iPhone charging and headphone use.


title: Belkin

text: Belkin markets smart home automation products, including smart Wi-Fi light switches and plugs compatible with Google Assistant, Google Home, Nest and Apple Homekit, through its WeMo brand and water monitoring devices through its Phyn brand.


title: Belkin

text: In 2020, Belkin announced the launch of a health and wellness line of products such as facemasks and electronic screen cleaning wipes.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Marie-Sophie Germain (; 1 April 1776 – 27 June 1831) was a French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. Despite initial opposition from her parents and difficulties presented by society, she gained education from books in her father's library, including ones by Euler, and from correspondence with famous mathematicians such as Lagrange, Legendre, and Gauss (under the pseudonym of Monsieur LeBlanc). One of the pioneers of elasticity theory, she won the grand prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences for her essay on the subject. Her work on Fermat's Last Theorem provided a foundation for mathematicians exploring the subject for hundreds of years after. Because of prejudice against her sex, she was unable to make a career out of mathematics, but she worked independently throughout her life. Before her death, Gauss had recommended that she be awarded an honorary degree, but that never occurred. On 27 June 1831, she died from breast cancer. At the centenary of her life, a street and a girls’ school were named after her. The Academy of Sciences established the Sophie Germain Prize in her honor.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Marie-Sophie Germain was born on April 1, 1776, in Paris, France, in a house on Rue Saint-Denis. According to most sources, her father, Ambroise-François, was a wealthy silk merchant, though some believe he was a goldsmith. In 1789, he was elected as a representative of the bourgeoisie to the États-Généraux, which he saw change into the Constitutional Assembly. It is therefore assumed that Sophie witnessed many discussions between her father and his friends on politics and philosophy. Gray proposes that after his political career, Ambroise-François became the director of a bank; in any case, the family remained well-off enough to support Germain throughout her adult life.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Marie-Sophie had one younger sister, named Angélique-Ambroise, and one older sister, named Marie-Madeline. Her mother was also named Marie-Madeline, and this plethora of "Maries" may have been the reason she went by Sophie. Germain's nephew Armand-Jacques Lherbette, Marie-Madeline's son, published some of Germain's work after she died (see Work in Philosophy).


title: Sophie Germain

text: When Germain was 13, the Bastille fell, and the revolutionary atmosphere of the city forced her to stay inside. For entertainment, she turned to her father's library. Here she found J. E. Montucla's "L'Histoire des Mathématiques", and his story of the death of Archimedes intrigued her.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Germain thought that if the geometry method, which at that time referred to all of pure mathematics, could hold such fascination for Archimedes, it was a subject worthy of study. So she pored over every book on mathematics in her father's library, even teaching herself Latin and Greek, so she could read works like those of Sir Isaac Newton and Leonhard Euler. She also enjoyed by Étienne Bézout and by . Later, Cousin visited Germain at home, encouraging her in her studies.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Germain's parents did not at all approve of her sudden fascination with mathematics, which was then thought inappropriate for a woman. When night came, they would deny her warm clothes and a fire for her bedroom to try to keep her from studying, but after they left, she would take out candles, wrap herself in quilts and do mathematics. After some time, her mother even secretly supported her.


title: Sophie Germain

text: In 1794, when Germain was 18, the École Polytechnique opened. As a woman, Germain was barred from attending, but the new system of education made the "lecture notes available to all who asked". The new method also required the students to "submit written observations". Germain obtained the lecture notes and began sending her work to Joseph Louis Lagrange, a faculty member. She used the name of a former student Monsieur Antoine-Auguste Le Blanc, "fearing", as she later explained to Gauss, "the ridicule attached to a female scientist". When Lagrange saw the intelligence of M. Le Blanc, he requested a meeting, and thus Sophie was forced to disclose her true identity. Fortunately, Lagrange did not mind that Germain was a woman, and he became her mentor.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Germain first became interested in number theory in 1798 when Adrien-Marie Legendre published . After studying the work, she opened correspondence with him on number theory, and later, elasticity. Legendre included some of Germain's work in the to his second edition of the , where he calls it ("very ingenious"). See also Her work on Fermat's Last Theorem below.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Germain's interest in number theory was renewed when she read Carl Friedrich Gauss' monumental work . After three years of working through the exercises and trying her own proofs for some of the theorems, she wrote, again under the pseudonym of M. Le Blanc, to the author himself, who was one year younger than she. The first letter, dated 21 November 1804, discussed Gauss' and presented some of Germain's work on Fermat's Last Theorem. In the letter, Germain claimed to have proved the theorem for "n" = "p" − 1, where "p" is a prime number of the form "p" = 8"k" + 7. However, her proof contained a weak assumption, and Gauss' reply did not comment on Germain's proof.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Around 1807 (sources differ), during the Napoleonic wars, the French were occupying the German town of Braunschweig, where Gauss lived. Germain, concerned that he might suffer the fate of Archimedes, wrote to General Pernety (), a family friend, requesting that he ensure Gauss' safety. General Pernety sent the chief of a battalion to meet with Gauss personally to see that he was safe. As it turned out, Gauss was fine, but he was confused by the mention of Sophie's name.


title: Sophie Germain

text: How can I describe my astonishment and admiration on seeing my esteemed correspondent M. Le Blanc metamorphosed into this celebrated person ... when a woman, because of her sex, our customs and prejudices, encounters infinitely more obstacles than men in familiarising herself with [number theory's] knotty problems, yet overcomes these fetters and penetrates that which is most hidden, she doubtless has the noblest courage, extraordinary talent, and superior genius.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Gauss' letters to Olbers show that his praise for Germain was sincere. In the same 1807 letter, Germain claimed that if formula_1 is of the form formula_2, then formula_3 is also of that form. Gauss replied with a counterexample: formula_4 can be written as formula_5, but formula_6 cannot.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Although Gauss thought well of Germain, his replies to her letters were often delayed, and he generally did not review her work. Eventually his interests turned away from number theory, and in 1809 the letters ceased. Despite the friendship of Germain and Gauss, they never met.


title: Sophie Germain

text: When Germain's correspondence with Gauss ceased, she took interest in a contest sponsored by the Paris Academy of Sciences concerning Ernst Chladni's experiments with vibrating metal plates. The object of the competition, as stated by the Academy, was "to give the mathematical theory of the vibration of an elastic surface and to compare the theory to experimental evidence". Lagrange's comment that a solution to the problem would require the invention of a new branch of analysis deterred all but two contestants, Denis Poisson and Germain. Then Poisson was elected to the Academy, thus becoming a judge instead of a contestant, and leaving Germain as the only entrant to the competition.


title: Sophie Germain

text: In 1809 Germain began work. Legendre assisted by giving her equations, references, and current research. She submitted her paper early in the fall of 1811 and did not win the prize. The judging commission felt that "the true equations of the movement were not established", even though "the experiments presented ingenious results". Lagrange was able to use Germain's work to derive an equation that was "correct under special assumptions".


title: Sophie Germain

text: The contest was extended by two years, and Germain decided to try again for the prize. At first Legendre continued to offer support, but then he refused all help. Germain's anonymous 1813 submission was still littered with mathematical errors, especially involving double integrals, and it received only an honorable mention because "the fundamental base of the theory [of elastic surfaces] was not established". The contest was extended once more, and Germain began work on her third attempt. This time she consulted with Poisson. In 1814 he published his own work on elasticity and did not acknowledge Germain's help (although he had worked with her on the subject and, as a judge on the Academy commission, had had access to her work).


title: Sophie Germain

text: Germain submitted her third paper, "", under her own name, and on 8 January 1816 she became the first woman to win a prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences. She did not appear at the ceremony to receive her award. Although Germain had at last been awarded the , the Academy was still not fully satisfied. Germain had derived the correct differential equation (a special case of the Kirchhoff–Love equation), but her method did not predict experimental results with great accuracy, as she had relied on an incorrect equation from Euler, which led to incorrect boundary conditions. Here is Germain's final equation for the vibration of a plane lamina:


title: Sophie Germain

text: After winning the Academy contest, she was still not able to attend its sessions because of the Academy's tradition of excluding women other than the wives of members. Seven years later this situation was transformed, when she made friends with Joseph Fourier, a secretary of the Academy, who obtained tickets to the sessions for her.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Germain published her prize-winning essay at her own expense in 1821, mostly because she wanted to present her work in opposition to that of Poisson. In the essay she pointed out some of the errors in his method.


title: Sophie Germain

text: In 1826 she submitted a revised version of her 1821 essay to the Academy. According to Andrea Del Centina, the revision included attempts to clarify her work by "introducing certain simplifying hypotheses". This put the Academy in an awkward position, as they felt the paper to be "inadequate and trivial", but they did not want to "treat her as a professional colleague, as they would any man, by simply rejecting the work". So Augustin-Louis Cauchy, who had been appointed to review her work, recommended her to publish it, and she followed his advice.


title: Sophie Germain

text: One further work of Germain's on elasticity was published posthumously in 1831, her "". She used the mean curvature in her research (see Honors in number theory).


title: Sophie Germain

text: Germain's best work was in number theory, and her most significant contribution to number theory dealt with Fermat's Last Theorem. In 1815, after the elasticity contest, the Academy offered a prize for a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. It reawakened Germain's interest in number theory, and she wrote to Gauss again after ten years of no correspondence.


title: Sophie Germain

text: In the letter, Germain said that number theory was her preferred field and that it was in her mind all the time she was studying elasticity. She outlined a strategy for a general proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, including a proof for a special case. Germain's letter to Gauss contained her substantial progress toward a proof. She asked Gauss whether her approach to the theorem was worth pursuing. Gauss never answered.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Fermat's Last Theorem can be divided into two cases. Case 1 involves all powers "p" that do not divide any of "x", "y", or "z". Case 2 includes all "p" that divide at least one of "x", "y", or "z". Germain proposed the following, commonly called "Sophie Germain's theorem":


title: Sophie Germain

text: Let "p" be an odd prime. If there exists an auxiliary prime "P" = 2"Np" + 1 ("N" is any positive integer not divisible by 3) such that:


title: Sophie Germain

text: Germain used this result to prove the first case of Fermat's Last Theorem for all odd primes "p" < 100, but according to Andrea Del Centina, "she had actually shown that it holds for every exponent "p" < 197". L. E. Dickson later used Germain's theorem to prove the first case of Fermat's Last Theorem for all odd primes less than 1700.


title: Sophie Germain

text: In an unpublished manuscript titled , Germain showed that any counterexamples to Fermat's theorem for "p" > 5 must be numbers "whose size frightens the imagination", around 40 digits long. Germain did not publish this work. Her brilliant theorem is known only because of the footnote in Legendre's treatise on number theory, where he used it to prove Fermat's Last Theorem for "p" = 5 (see Correspondence with Legendre). Germain also proved or nearly proved several results that were attributed to Lagrange or were rediscovered years later. Del Centina states that "after almost two hundred years her ideas were still central", but ultimately her method did not work.


title: Sophie Germain

text: In addition to mathematics, Germain studied philosophy and psychology. She wanted to classify facts and generalize them into laws that could form a system of psychology and sociology, which were then just coming into existence. Her philosophy was highly praised by Auguste Comte.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Two of her philosophical works, and , were published, both posthumously. This was due in part to the efforts of Lherbette, her nephew, who collected her philosophical writings and published them. is a history of science and mathematics with Germain's commentary. In , the work admired by Comte, Germain argues that there are no differences between the sciences and the humanities.


title: Sophie Germain

text: In 1829 Germain learned that she had breast cancer. Despite the pain, she continued to work. In 1831 "Crelle's Journal" published her paper on the curvature of elastic surfaces and "a note about finding and in formula_8". Mary Gray records: "She also published in an examination of principles which led to the discovery of the laws of equilibrium and movement of elastic solids." On 27 June 1831, she died in the house at 13 rue de Savoie.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Despite Germain's intellectual achievements, her death certificate lists her as a "" (property holder), not a "". But her work was not unappreciated by everyone. When the matter of honorary degrees came up at the University of Göttingen in 1837—six years after Germain's death—Gauss lamented: "she [Germain] proved to the world that even a woman can accomplish something worthwhile in the most rigorous and abstract of the sciences and for that reason would well have deserved an honorary degree".


title: Sophie Germain

text: Germain's resting place in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris is marked by a gravestone. At the centennial celebration of her life, a street and a girls' school were named after her, and a plaque was placed at the house where she died. The school houses a bust commissioned by the Paris City Council.


title: Sophie Germain

text: In January 2020, Satellogic, a high-resolution Earth observation imaging and analytics company, launched a ÑuSat type micro-satellite named in honor of Sophie Germain.


title: Sophie Germain

text: E. Dubouis defined a "sophien" of a prime to be a prime where , for such that yield such that has no solutions when and are prime to .


title: Sophie Germain

text: The Germain curvature (also called mean curvature) is formula_9, where and are the maximum and minimum values of the normal curvature.


title: Sophie Germain

text: Vesna Petrovich found that the educated world's response to the publication in 1821 of Germain's prize-winning essay "ranged from polite to indifferent". Yet, some critics had high praise for it. Of her essay in 1821, Cauchy said: "[it] was a work for which the name of its author and the importance of the subject both deserved the attention of mathematicians". Germain was also included in H. J. Mozans' book "Woman in Science", although Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie claims that the biography "is inaccurate and the notes and bibliography are unreliable". Nevertheless, it quotes the mathematician Claude-Louis Navier as saying that "it is a work which few men are able to read and which only one woman was able to write".


title: Sophie Germain

text: Germain's contemporaries also had good things to say relating to her work in mathematics. Gauss certainly thought highly of her and recognized that European culture presented special difficulties to a woman in mathematics (see Correspondence with Gauss).


title: Sophie Germain

text: The modern view generally acknowledges that although Germain had great talent as a mathematician, her haphazard education had left her without the strong base she needed to truly excel. As explained by Gray, "Germain's work in elasticity suffered generally from an absence of rigor, which might be attributed to her lack of formal training in the rudiments of analysis." Petrovich adds: "This proved to be a major handicap when she could no longer be regarded as a young prodigy to be admired but was judged by her peer mathematicians."


title: Sophie Germain

text: Notwithstanding the problems with Germain's theory of vibrations, Gray states that "Germain's work was fundamental in the development of a general theory of elasticity." Mozans writes, however, that when the Eiffel tower was built and the architects inscribed the names of 72 great French scientists, Germain's name was not among them, despite the salience of her work to the tower's construction. Mozans asked: "Was she excluded from this list ... because she was a woman? It would seem so."


title: Sophie Germain

text: Concerning her early work in number theory, J. H. Sampson states: "She was clever with formal algebraic manipulations; but there is little evidence that she really understood the , and her work of that period that has come down to us seems to touch only on rather superficial matters." Gray adds on to say "The inclination of sympathetic mathematicians to praise her work rather than to provide substantive criticism from which she might learn was crippling to her mathematical development." Yet Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie recognizes that "Sophie Germain's creativity manifested itself in pure and applied mathematics ... [she] provided imaginative and provocative solutions to several important problems", and, as Petrovich proposes, it may have been her very lack of training that gave her unique insights and approaches. Louis Bucciarelli and Nancy Dworsky, Germain's biographers, summarize as follows: "All the evidence argues that Sophie Germain had a mathematical brilliance that never reached fruition due to a lack of rigorous training available only to men."


title: Sophie Germain

text: Germain was referenced and quoted in David Auburn's 2001 play "Proof." The protagonist is a young struggling female mathematician, Catherine, who found great inspiration in the work of Germain. Germain was also mentioned in John Madden's film adaptation of the same name in a conversation between Catherine (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal).


title: Sophie Germain

text: In the fictional work "The Last Theorem" by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederik Pohl, Sophie Germain was credited with inspiring the central character, Ranjit Subramanian, to solve Fermat's Last Theorem.


title: Sophie Germain

text: A new musical about Sophie Germain's life, entitled The Limit, premiered at VAULT Festival in London, 2019.


title: Sophie Germain

text: The Sophie Germain Prize (), awarded annually by the Foundation Sophie Germain, is conferred by the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Its purpose is to honour a French mathematician for research in the foundations of mathematics. This award, in the amount of €8,000, was established in 2003, under the auspices of the Institut de France.


title: Barbershop quartet

text: A barbershop quartet is a group of four singers who sing music in the barbershop style, characterized by four-part harmony without instrumental accompaniment, or a cappella. The four voices are: the lead, the vocal part which typically carries the melody; a bass, the part which provides the bass line to the melody; a tenor, the part which harmonizes above the lead; and a baritone, the part that frequently completes the chord. The baritone normally sings just below the lead singer, sometimes just above as the harmony requires. Barbershop music is typified by close harmony— the upper three voices generally remain within one octave of each other.


title: Barbershop quartet

text: While the traditional barbershop quartet included only male singers, contemporary quartets can include any gender combination. All-female barbershop quartets were often called beauty shop quartets, a term that has fallen out of favor. The voice parts for women's and mixed barbershop groups use the same names as those for male groups since the roles perform similar functions in the quartet although the vocal ranges may be different.


title: Barbershop quartet

text: While the regional origins of barbershop quartet singing are not wholly agreed upon, current organizations that promote the style typify it as an "old American institution." While the style is most popular in the United States, barbershop organizations exist in the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, South Africa, Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.


title: Barbershop quartet

text: Barbershop quartets have been featured in popular culture in musical theater productions such as "The Music Man", or lampooned in television series such as "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy".


title: Barbershop quartet

text: While many sources claim that barbershop singing originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States of America, some maintain that the origins of barbershop singing are "obscure". The style is considered a blend of White and African American musical styles. Although the African American influence is sometimes overlooked, these quartets had a formative role in the development of the style.


title: Barbershop quartet

text: By the 1920s, the popularity of the style had begun to fade. It was revived in the late 1930s along with the founding of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America (SPEBSQSA), now known as the Barbershop Harmony Society, or BHS. The society's first meeting was held at the Tulsa Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on April 11, 1938, and it was open only to male singers. In 1945, a parallel organization for women was also founded in Tulsa, called Sweet Adelines International (SAI). Harmony, Incorporated (HI), also serving women, was established in Rhode Island in 1959.


title: Barbershop quartet

text: In 1971, president of BHS Ralph Ribble launched the "Barberpole Cat Program" to encourage barbershop singing as widely as possible. Well-known and popular barbershop songs were published and promoted in order to provide a core set of pieces for barbershop quartets. The current list of 12 songs, commonly known as "polecats", was selected in 1987. These songs, plus the tag end of two others, are:


title: Barbershop quartet

text: In competition, barbershop quartets generally wear coordinated outfits to mark them as members of the same group. A group's visual impression is rated as part of the "showmanship" score. The Society Contest and Judging Committee of the Barbershop Harmony Society notes in their rule book that aesthetics are important to competitive success: "The judge responds to both the vocal and visual aspects of the performance, but the judge principally evaluates the interaction of those aspects as they work together to create the image of the song."


title: Barbershop quartet

text: Traditionally, barbershop quartet attire consisted of: vest, straw hat, and spats, often with bow tie and sleeve garters; this is known as the Gay Nineties style. In popular culture, this style exemplifies the stereotypical barbershop quartet. Several Walt Disney theme parks feature a dedicated barbershop quartet called The Dapper Dans (Disney World version pictured). The outfits worn by these performers vary depending on location but do feature vests and straw hats.


title: Barbershop quartet

text: As a general rule, barbershop quartets use a TTBB (tenor—tenor—baritone—bass) arrangement, with the second tenor singing the lead. Since the 1940s, barbershop singers have tuned their seventh chords with just intonation to maximize the overtones, yielding a distinctive "ringing" sound.


title: Barbershop quartet

text: Tenor: The tenor generally harmonizes above the lead, making the part the highest in the quartet. So as not to overpower the lead singer, who carries the tune, the part is often sung in falsetto, which is of a softer quality than singing in the modal register, though some quartets do make use of tenors with a softer full voice quality. Notable examples of barbershop quartets which made use of the full-voiced tenor include The Buffalo Bills and Boston Common.


title: Barbershop quartet

text: The range of a tenor in barbershop music does not necessarily closely correspond to that of a tenor's range in Classical repertoire, often being more in the range of the classical countertenor range.


title: Barbershop quartet

text: Lead: The lead, often a lower or second tenor or even more recently a higher or lighter baritone, usually sings the main melody.


title: Barbershop quartet

text: Baritone: The baritone often completes the chord with a medium voice, usually slightly below the lead, but sometimes above it.


title: Barbershop quartet

text: Bass: The bass always sings and harmonizes the lowest notes, often setting the root of the chord for root position chords, or singing the lowest note of the chord for inverted chords.


title: Chris Roberts (video game developer)

text: Chris Roberts (born May 27, 1968) is a British-American video game designer, programmer, film producer and film director. He created the "Wing Commander" series while at Origin Systems and as of 2011 has been working on the crowdfunded space simulator "Star Citizen".


title: Chris Roberts (video game developer)

text: Born in Redwood City, California in the United States, Roberts grew up in Manchester, England. He attended Parrs Wood High School, the same school as computer music composer Martin Galway. As a teenager, he created several video games for the BBC Micro, including "Stryker's Run", "Wizadore", and "King Kong".


title: Chris Roberts (video game developer)

text: Roberts returned to the United States in 1986. He found a job at Origin Systems, where he created "Times of Lore", published in 1988. The game's interface had a strong influence on other Origin products such as the popular "Ultima" series. A similar game system was used in Roberts's next release for Origin, "Bad Blood" (1990).


title: Chris Roberts (video game developer)

text: "Wing Commander" was published later in 1990 and was highly acclaimed. "Wing Commander" (and the franchise it spawned) soon became Origin's most successful product. Roberts wasn't as heavily involved in the sequel "Wing Commander II", which he only produced. He instead concentrated on "Strike Commander". First shown to the public at Summer CES 1991, the project suffered from numerous delays and was not released until 1993. He returned to "Wing Commander" soon after, devising the original concept for the spin-off "" (which his brother, Erin Roberts, produced) and being more deeply involved in "Wing Commander III" and "Wing Commander IV". For these sequels, Roberts directed the live-action cinematic scenes. Roberts's major role in developing the "Wing Commander" games led "Next Generation" to name him one of their "75 Most Important People in the Games Industry of 1995".


title: Chris Roberts (video game developer)

text: Following the traditions of Origin Systems, Chris Roberts's residence at the outskirts of Austin, Texas was named "Commander's Ranch", a reference to the "Wing Commander" series.


title: Chris Roberts (video game developer)

text: Roberts left Origin in 1996 and founded Digital Anvil with Tony Zurovec and his brother Erin Roberts. He cited disillusionment with working with large development teams and Origin parent company Electronic Arts' unwillingness to give substantial funding to games that weren't sequels. The fledgling studio set up shop in Austin and for several years worked quietly, inking a publishing deal with Microsoft in 1997.


title: Chris Roberts (video game developer)

text: Roberts had stated that he desired to produce films as well as games with Digital Anvil. The 1999 feature film release of "Wing Commander" directed by Roberts himself, starring Freddie Prinze Jr. and featuring visual effects from Digital Anvil failed to attract either critical praise or financial success.


title: Chris Roberts (video game developer)

text: Digital Anvil's first finished game was "Starlancer", released to a generally favorable critical reception in 2000. Developed jointly between Warthog and Digital Anvil, the game was produced by the Roberts brothers, and Eric Peterson. The company was acquired by Microsoft soon after, who sold two of Digital Anvil's projects, "" led by Eric Peterson, and "Loose Cannon" led by Tony Zurovec to Ubisoft. Roberts left the company after the acquisition, abandoning the director position of his ambitious project "Freelancer", although he remained with the game in a consulting role for a while. The game was commonly regarded as vaporware due to its promised release date of 2001 however it was eventually released in 2003 with a markedly different feature set than the initial plans.


title: Chris Roberts (video game developer)

text: After leaving Digital Anvil, Roberts founded Point of No Return Entertainment, planning to produce films, television and games. However, no projects materialized from Point of No Return. Roberts founded Ascendant Pictures in 2002 and served as a producer for a number of Hollywood productions including "Edison", "Timber Falls", "Outlander", "Who's Your Caddy?", "The Big White", "Ask the Dust", "Lucky Number Slevin" and "Lord of War", which were almost entirely financed by a loophole in the German tax laws that was finally closed in 2006. Robert's activities as a film producer ended with the depletion of the funds raised by this controversial financing scheme. In 2005, actor Kevin Costner sued Ascendant Pictures for breach of contract on an unreleased film. The company was acquired by Bigfoot Entertainment in 2010.


title: Chris Roberts (video game developer)

text: In 2011, Chris Roberts founded Cloud Imperium Games with his wife Sandi Roberts, as well as business partner and long-time international media attorney Ortwin Freyermuth, to work on a new game. In October 2012, Cloud Imperium Games launched a crowdfunding campaign on their website to produce a space simulation game, "Star Citizen", and later added a Kickstarter campaign in conjunction. By November 2012, they had earned US$6,238,563, surpassing all stretch goals set for the campaigns, and breaking video game industry crowdfunding records. Chris Roberts had stated that if at least $23 million could be raised over the course of the crowdfunding campaign, no outside investors' or developers' funding would be required. This goal was reached October 18, 2013.


title: Chris Roberts (video game developer)

text: As of February 22, 2022, Cloud Imperium Games has raised over US$474 million in crowdfunding and over $63.25 million in external investments. Cloud Imperium Games' other title in development, Squadron 42, a single-player campaign set in the Star Citizen universe, is still in development and has no confirmed release date as of March 2022, although Cloud Imperium Games has announced they are allocating more resources toward its development.


title: Ready-mix concrete

text: Ready-mix concrete (RMC) is concrete that is manufactured in a batch plant, according to each specific job requirement, then delivered to the job site "ready to use".


title: Ready-mix concrete

text: There are two types with the first being the barrel truck or in–transit mixers. This type of truck delivers concrete in a plastic state to the site. The second is the volumetric concrete mixer. This delivers the ready mix in a dry state and then mixes the concrete on site. However, other sources divide the material into three types: Transit Mix, Central Mix or Shrink Mix concrete.


title: Ready-mix concrete

text: Ready-mix concrete refers to concrete that is specifically manufactured for customers' construction projects, and supplied to the customer on site as a single product. It is a mixture of Portland or other cements, water and aggregates: sand, gravel, or crushed stone. All aggregates should be of a washed type material with limited amounts of fines or dirt and clay. An admixture is often added to improve workability of the concrete and/or increase setting time of concrete (using retarders) to factor in the time required for the transit mixer to reach the site. The global market size is disputed depending on the source. It was estimated at 650 billion dollars in 2019. However it was estimated at just under 500 billion dollars in 2018.


title: Ready-mix concrete

text: There is some dispute as to when the first ready-mix delivery was made and when the first factory was built. Some sources suggest as early as 1913 in Baltimore. By 1929 there were over 100 plants operating in the United States. The industry did not expand significantly until the 1960s, and has continued to grow since then.


title: Ready-mix concrete

text: Batch plants combine a precise amount of gravel, sand, water and cement by weight (as per a mix design formulation for the grade of concrete recommended by the structural engineer or architect), allowing specialty concrete mixtures to be developed and implemented on construction sites.


title: Ready-mix concrete

text: Ready-mix concrete is often used instead of other materials due to the cost and wide range of uses in building, particularly in large projects like high-rise buildings and bridges. It has a long life span when compared to other products of a similar use, like roadways. It has an average life span of 30 years under high traffic areas compared to the 10 to 12 year life of asphalt concrete with the same traffic.


title: Ready-mix concrete

text: Ready-mixed concrete is used in construction projects where the construction site is not willing, or is unable, to mix concrete on site. Using ready-mixed concrete means product is delivered finished, on demand, in the specific quantity required, in the specific mix design required. For a small to medium project, the cost and time of hiring mixing equipment, labour, plus purchase and storage for the ingredients of concrete, added to environmental concerns (cement dust is an airborne health hazard) may simply be not worthwhile when compared to the cost of ready-mixed concrete, where the customer pays for what they use, and allows others do the work up to that point. For a large project, outsourcing concrete production to ready-mixed concrete suppliers means delegating the quality control and testing, material logistics and supply chain issues and mix design, to specialists who are already established for those tasks, trading off against introducing another contracted external supplier who needs to make a profit, and losing the control and immediacy of on-site mixing.


title: Ready-mix concrete

text: Ready-mix concrete is bought and sold by volume – usually expressed in cubic meters (cubic yards in the US). Batching and mixing is done under controlled conditions. In the UK, ready-mixed concrete is specified either informally, by constituent weight or volume (1-2-4 or 1-3-6 being common mixes) or using the formal specification standards of the European standard EN 206+ A1, which is supplemented in the UK by BS 8500. This allows the customer to specify what the concrete has to be able to withstand in terms of ground conditions, exposure, and strength, and allows the concrete manufacturer to design a mix that meets that requirement using the materials locally available to a batching plant. This is verified by laboratory testing, such as performing cube tests to verify compressive strength, flexural tests, and supplemented by field testing, such as slump tests done on site to verify plasticity of the mix.


title: Ready-mix concrete

text: The performance of a concrete mix can be altered by use of admixtures. Admixtures can be used to reduce water requirements, entrain air into a mixture, to improve surface durability, or even superplasticise concrete to make it self-levelling, as self-consolidating concrete, the use of admixtures requires precision in dosing and mix design, which is more difficult without the dosing/measuring equipment and laboratory backing of a batching plant, which means they are not easily used outside of ready-mixed concrete.


title: Ready-mix concrete

text: Concrete has a limited lifespan between batching / mixing and curing. This means that ready-mixed concrete should be placed within 30 to 45 minutes of the batching process to hold slump and mix design specifications in the USA, though in the UK, environmental and material factors, plus in-transit mixing, allow for up two hours to elapse. Modern admixtures and water reducers can modify that time span to some degree.


title: Ready-mix concrete

text: Ready-mixed concrete can be transported and placed at site using a number of methods. The most common and simplest is the chute fitted to the back of transit mixer trucks (as in picture), which is suitable for placing concrete near locations where a truck can back in. Dumper trucks, crane hoppers, truck-mounted conveyors, and, "in extremis", wheelbarrows, can be used to place concrete from trucks where access is not direct. Some concrete mixes are suitable for pumping with a concrete pump.


title: Ready-mix concrete

text: In 2011, there were 2,223 companies employing 72,925 workers that produced ready-mix concrete in the United States.


title: Ready-mix concrete

text: As an alternative to centralized batch plant system is the volumetric mobile mixer. This is often referred to as on-site concrete, site mixed concrete or mobile mix concrete. This is a mobile miniaturized version of the large stationary batch plant. They are used to provide ready mix concrete utilizing a continuous batching process or metered concrete system. The volumetric mobile mixer is a truck that holds sand, rock, cement, water, fiber, and some add mixtures and color depending on how the batch plant is outfitted. These trucks mix or batch the ready mix on the job site. This type of truck can mix as much or as little amount of concrete as needed. The on-site mixing eliminates the travel time hydration that can cause the transit mixed concrete to become unusable. These trucks are as precise as the centralized batch plant system, since the trucks are scaled and tested using the same ASTM (American standard test method) like all other ready mix manufactures. This is a hybrid approach between centralized batch plants and traditional on-site mixing. Each type of system has advantages and disadvantages, depending on the location, size of the job, and mix design set forth by the engineer.


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: "All I Wanna Do" is a song performed by Sheryl Crow. The song was written by Crow, David Baerwald, Bill Bottrell, and Kevin Gilbert, with lyrics adapted from Wyn Cooper's 1987 poem "Fun". It was Crow's breakthrough hit from her 1993 debut album, "Tuesday Night Music Club". The song is Crow's biggest US hit, peaking at number two on the "Billboard" Hot 100 behind "I'll Make Love to You" by Boyz II Men for six consecutive weeks from October 8 to November 12, 1994, and it also topped the "Billboard" Adult Contemporary chart. It was the winner of the 1995 Grammy for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and was nominated for Song of the Year.


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: In addition to its US success, "All I Wanna Do" peaked at number one in Australia for one week and in Canada for four weeks, also topping the "RPM" Adult Contemporary chart in the latter country. In New Zealand and the United Kingdom, it peaked at number four, and in Europe, it reached the top 10 in Austria, Flemish Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. It is Crow's biggest international hit to date.


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: The lyrics of the song are based on the poem "Fun" by Wyn Cooper. Cooper was inspired to write the poem by a conversation at a bar with a friend and occasional writer, Bill Ripley,<ref name="cprw/Rothman/ripley2"></ref><ref name="cprw/Rothman/ripley1"></ref> in which he said "All I want is to have a little fun before I die", which became the first line of the poem. In a 1994 interview, Cooper said: "The poem isn't really about him. Or me. They're different people. They're people you can sort of see as ... well ... objective correlatives. Symbols of people like us, or what we could have been, or what we would have become if we continued to drink and do nothing with our lives."


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: Toad Hall Studio, where the song was recorded, was next door to the Pasadena Playhouse.<ref name="psaudio/copper/story-of-wanna"></ref><ref name="encyclopedia.com/rusted-root"></ref> Crow's producer (Bottrell) discovered Cooper's poetry book "The Country of Here Below" in a nearby used bookstore in Pasadena, California. Crow had written a song called "I Still Love You" but was unhappy with its lyrics; she used its melody and adapted the poem for her lyrics to "All I Wanna Do".


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: The song earned Cooper considerable royalties and helped to promote his book, originally published in a run of only 500 copies in 1987, into multiple reprints. After the song became popular, Ripley brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against Cooper for some of the song's royalties, which ended their friendship.


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: The opening spoken line, "This ain't no disco", is a reference to the song "Life During Wartime" by Talking Heads.


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: In 1997, after attending a performance of Crow at the Rosemont Theatre in Illinois, veteran "Chicago Tribune" music critic Greg Kot called the song "a rewrite of Stealers Wheel's 'Stuck in the Middle with You'".


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: Larry Flick from "Billboard" wrote, "Critical darling is poised for a long-deserved top 40 breakthrough with this breezy hand-clapper. Crow has a friendly demeanor that adds extra bounce to a sweet instrumental setting of jangly guitars and toe-tapping beats. Live-sounding jam is a fitting soundtrack to a day at the beach or speeding down the highway with the top down." Troy J. Augusto from "Cash Box" felt it should have been the first single from "Tuesday Night Music Club". "Devil-may-care lyrics (“I like a good beer-buzz, early in the morning”), a cool country twang and Sheryl’s friendly vocal style should all spell hit for this feelin’-good number. Rock, country, adult and, particularly, hits radio should all find lots to love about this low-key frolic. Don’t miss the live show." In a second single review, he noted, "Seriously infectious hook, simple yet clever instrumentation and Crow’s likable personality all spell a winner here. A perfect summertime track, “All I Wanna Do” could well be the song that kicks off Sheryl’s run at the big leagues." Music writer James Masterton commented in his weekly UK chart commentary, that "All I Wanna Do" "certainly has potential to go further, not least with Lisa Loeb as a role model but my one overwhelming confession is that I honestly cannot see what all the fuss is about. It's a good record, but no more." Alan Jones from "Music Week" said "this cheery pop/rock smash is a wordy, but expertly delivered and invigorating confection with a catchy chorus." He added, "Brits may not smile as much as US rock buyers, but they'll grin enough to get this into the chart."


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: The music video for the song was directed by David Hogan, who also directed her debut video for "Leaving Las Vegas". It features Crow and her band performing the song on the street, with notable characters flying through the air. The video was filmed in front of the Roxy Theatre at the corner of Franklin Street and North 1st Street in Clarksville, Tennessee.


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: Two versions of the music video exist. The original video featured the character "Billy", mentioned in the song, played by actor Gregory Sporleder. A second version of the video was released with the character's appearances edited out. The edited version appears on Crow's "Greatest Hits" music video DVD.


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: In 2009, an additional music video was released, featured on the 2009 re-release of "Tuesday Night Music Club".


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: English singer-songwriter Amy Studt released a cover version of the song as her fourth single. Studt was asked personally by Sheryl Crow to record a cover of the song, and Crow provided backing vocals on the track.


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: Released on January 12, 2004, the single reached a peak of number 21 on the UK Singles Chart and number 25 on the Irish Singles Chart. It was taken from the re-release of her debut album, "False Smiles". Following the peaking of "All I Wanna Do", Studt was dropped from her record label Polydor for poor sales.


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: "Weird Al" Yankovic included "All I Wanna Do" in his polka medley "The Alternative Polka" from his album "Bad Hair Day".


title: All I Wanna Do (Sheryl Crow song)

text: US singer Joanne Farrell released a dance version of the song in 1995. The song reached number 40 on the "Billboard" Dance Club Play chart; it also reached number 40 on the Official UK Singles Chart.


title: Black Rain (Ozzy Osbourne album)

text: Black Rain is the tenth solo studio album by British heavy metal vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, released 22 May 2007 via Epic Records. It is Osbourne's last album to date to feature drummer Mike Bordin, and the first to feature bassist Rob Nicholson. It is also the first album since 2001's "Down to Earth" to feature guitar player Zakk Wylde. However, he left again after the album's release, but reappeared again on Osbourne's 2022 album "Patient Number 9". "Black Rain" debuted at No. 3 on the US "Billboard" 200, selling about 152,000 copies in its first week; making it Osbourne's highest debut to date. The album has been certified Gold in US.


title: Black Rain (Ozzy Osbourne album)

text: The album was released in several different versions. The original US version was released in a thin, brown digipak with the crowned skull Ozzy Osbourne logo (pictured lower right), and for the rest of the world, it was released in a standard jewel case featuring cover art of Osbourne with "Black Rain" falling. This cover included a booklet complete with lyrics and album credits. The US version did not include a booklet, lyrics, or album credits. The Japanese release was the same as the other releases outside of the US, except for the fact that it included two bonus tracks, "I Can't Save You", and "Nightmare". The iTunes release of the album included the aforementioned "Nightmare", plus an exclusive bonus track, (only for those who preordered through iTunes) "Love to Hate". It also included a printable pdf file of the booklet, complete with lyrics and album credits. This same booklet was later made available as a free pdf download from Osbourne's website on 1 June. The song "I Don't Wanna Stop" was also featured as the theme song for WWE Judgment Day 2007.


title: Black Rain (Ozzy Osbourne album)

text: In the US, limited edition copies of the album were sold with special codes inside of the packets, which could be used to redeem a pair of Ozzfest 2007 tickets. Ozzfest 2007 was nicknamed "Freefest" because all tickets were free.


title: Black Rain (Ozzy Osbourne album)

text: The album was reissued in the US on 14 August in a new jewel-case package containing the full booklet with lyrics and new colour cover art and photos, also containing CD extra bonus content featuring behind-the-scenes footage from the "Black Rain" photo shoot.


title: Black Rain (Ozzy Osbourne album)

text: A "tour edition" version of the album was released on 20 November 2007. This release includes an extra CD with 3 recently recorded live tracks and 3 studio tracks originally available on international releases or digital versions.


title: Black Rain (Ozzy Osbourne album)

text: "Black Rain" received mixed reviews. "Rolling Stone" referred to the album as "highly skippable" and Sputnikmusic called it "quite embarrassing". AllMusic was somewhat less harsh in its assessment, giving the album 3.5 out of 5 stars while noting that "Nothing on Black Rain could really qualify as an Osbourne classic."


title: Post-Britpop

text: Post-Britpop is an alternative rock subgenre and is the period in the late 1990s and early 2000s, following Britpop, when the media were identifying a "new generation" or "second wave" of guitar bands influenced by acts like Oasis and Blur, but with less overt British concerns in their lyrics and making more use of American rock and indie influences, as well as experimental music. Bands in the post-Britpop era that had been established acts, but gained greater prominence after the decline of Britpop, such as Radiohead and the Verve, and new acts such as Travis, Keane, Snow Patrol, Stereophonics, Feeder, Toploader and particularly Coldplay, achieved much wider international success than most of the Britpop groups that had preceded them, and were some of the most commercially successful acts of the late 1990s and early 2000s.


title: Post-Britpop

text: Many bands in the post-Britpop era avoided the Britpop label while still producing music derived from it. The music of most bands was guitar based, often mixing elements of British traditional rock, particularly the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Small Faces, with American influences. Bands from the era utilized specific elements from 1970s British rock and pop music. Drawn from across the United Kingdom, the themes of their music tended to be less parochially centred on British, English and London life, and more introspective than had been the case with Britpop at its height. This, beside a greater willingness to woo the American press and fans, may have helped a number of them in achieving international success. They have been seen as presenting the image of the rock star as an ordinary person, or "boy-next-door" and their increasingly melodic music was criticised for being bland or derivative.


title: Post-Britpop

text: From about 1997, as dissatisfaction grew with the concept of Cool Britannia and Britpop as a movement began to dissolve, emerging bands began to avoid the Britpop label while still producing music derived from it. Bands that had enjoyed some success during the mid-1990s, but did not find major commercial success until the late 1990s included the Verve and Radiohead. After the decline of Britpop they began to gain more critical and popular attention. The Verve's album "Urban Hymns" (1997) was a worldwide hit and their commercial peak before they broke up in 1999, while Radiohead although having achieved moderate recognition with "The Bends" in 1995 achieved near-universal critical acclaim with their experimental third album "OK Computer" (1997), and its follow-ups "Kid A" (2000) and "Amnesiac" (2001).


title: Post-Britpop

text: The cultural and musical scene in Scotland, dubbed "Cool Caledonia" by some elements of the press, produced a number of successful alternative acts, including the Supernaturals from Glasgow, whose re-released single "Smile" (1997) reached number 25 in the UK charts, and whose album "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" (1997) entered the top ten, but who failed to sustain their success or achieve the anticipated international breakthrough. Travis, also from Glasgow, were one of the first major rock bands to emerge in the post-Britpop era. Utilising the hooks and guitar rock favoured by Oasis in a song-based format, they moved from the personal on "Good Feeling" (1997), through the general on their breakthrough "The Man Who" (1999), to the socially conscious and political on "12 Memories" (2003) and have been credited with a major role in disseminating a new Britpop. From Edinburgh Idlewild, more influenced by post-grunge, just failed to break into the British top 50 with their second album "Hope Is Important" (1998), but subsequently produced 3 top 20 albums, peaking with "The Remote Part" (2002), and the single "You Held the World in Your Arms", reaching numbers 3 and 9 in the respective UK charts. Although garnering some international attention, they did not break through in the US.


title: Post-Britpop

text: The first major band to breakthrough from the post-Britpop Welsh rock scene, dubbed "Cool Cymru", were Catatonia, whose single "Mulder and Scully" (1998) reached the top ten in the UK, and whose album "International Velvet" (1998) reached number one, but they were unable to make much impact in the US and, after personal problems, broke up at the end of the century. Stereophonics, also from Wales, used elements of a post-grunge and hardcore on their breakthrough albums "Word Gets Around" (1997) and "Performance and Cocktails" (1999), before moving into more melodic territory with "Just Enough Education to Perform" (2001) and subsequent albums. Also from Wales were Feeder, who were initially more influenced by American post-grunge, producing a hard rock sound that led to their breakthrough single "Buck Rogers" and the album "Echo Park" (2001). After the death of their drummer Jon Lee, they moved to a more reflective and introspective mode on "Comfort in Sound" (2002), their most commercially successful album to that point, which spawned a series of hit singles.


title: Post-Britpop

text: There was also a number of British bands getting more 'progressive' in their music style. Radiohead released "OK Computer" in May 1997, a few months before Oasis released "Be Here Now" (known as 'the album that killed Britpop' in some parts of the press), with Radiohead's album being followed by Mansun's "Six" album the next year (released on Parlophone at the time, but now available on progressive rock label Kscope). At the end of the 1990s, Devon band Muse would emerge from Teignmouth and sign to (Australian record company) Mushroom Records' new British arm via independent company Taste Media. Initially dismissed in certain sections of the press as 'Radiohead wannabes', the band would go on to top the UK albums chart six times, with every studio album reaching the top from 2003 to 2018.


title: Post-Britpop

text: These acts were followed by a number of bands who shared aspects of their music, including Snow Patrol from Northern Ireland, and Athlete, Elbow, Embrace, Starsailor, Doves, Gomez and Keane from England. The most commercially successful band in the millennium were Coldplay, whose first two albums "Parachutes" (2000) and "A Rush of Blood to the Head" (2002) went multi-platinum, establishing them as one of the most popular acts in the world by the time of their third album "X&Y" (2005). Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars" (from their 2006 album "Eyes Open") is the most widely played song of the 21st century on UK radio.


title: Post-Britpop

text: Bands like Coldplay, Starsailor and Elbow, with introspective lyrics and even tempos, began to be criticised at the beginning of the new millennium as bland and sterile, and the wave of garage rock or post punk revival bands, like The Hives, The Vines, The Strokes, and The White Stripes, that sprang up in that period were welcomed by the musical press as "the saviours of rock and roll". However, a number of the bands of this era, particularly Travis, Stereophonics and Coldplay, continued to record and enjoy commercial success into the new millennium. The notion of a "second wave" of Britpop has also been applied to bands originating in the new millennium, including Razorlight, Kaiser Chiefs, Arctic Monkeys and Bloc Party, These bands have been seen as looking less to music of the 1960s and more to 1970s punk and post-punk, while still being influenced by Britpop.


title: Post-Britpop

text: Bands in the post-Britpop era have been credited with revitalising the British rock music scene in the late 1990s and 2000s, and of reaping the commercial benefits opened up by Britpop. They have also been criticised for providing a "homogenised and conformist" version of Britpop that serves as music for TV soundtracks, shopping malls, bars and nightclubs.


title: Qareen

text: A Qareen ( "qarīn, Urdu:" ہمزاد literally meaning: 'constant companion') is a spiritual double of human, either part of the human himself or a complementary creature in a parallel dimension. Due to its ghostly nature, the Qareen is classified among the Jinn-type creatures, although usually not actually a Jinni. The Qareen as an accompanying spirit should not be confused with the "Qarinah", a female "childbed demon" in Middle Eastern traditions.


title: Qareen

text: "And whosoever turns away from remembering and mentioning the Most Beneficent, we appoint for him a Satan to be a "Qareen " to him."


title: Qareen

text: "And those who spend of their wealth to be seen by the people and believe not in Allah nor in the Last Day. And he to whom Satan is a Qareen - then evil is he as a Qareen."


title: Qareen

text: Several opinions exist on the exact nature of the Qareen. According to one opinion, the Qareen is actually a Shaitan, who incites a human with "waswās" ("evil suggestions"), but can become "good" in accordance with the human’s good deeds. However it is uncertain whether or not a Qareen besides that of Muhammad can actually become "good".


title: Qareen

text: Another opinion holds that Qareen refers to any type of spirit accompanying humans. Here, the Qareen refers to demons, who cast evil suggestions, but also to angels, who advise to do good deeds.


title: Qareen

text: Further the Qareen is depicted as the other self: an integral spirit that is part of the person. A dissent between the inner Qareen and the behavior may cause the same symptoms as Jinn-possession.


title: Qareen

text: The concept of a "Qareen" appears in pre-Islamic literature as well, and is reminiscent of the Greek daimones and the Christian guardian angel. In Pre-Islamic Arabian the Qareen is said to be able to inspire poets for their works.


title: Qareen

text: One of the seven mu'allaqat—Arabic poems recognized as masterpieces during the pre-Islamic period—uses the word as a metaphor. To describe his tribe's excellence in battle, poet Amr bin Kulthum says that "every tribe has taken fear of us as a "qarin" (or 'constant companion')," meaning that their fear of Amr's tribe is always present. This goes further to show the origin of the word "qareen", as described in the Arabic dictionary as a "companion".


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: The Beatles staged their third and final concert tour of North America in August 1966. It consisted of 18 performances, with 16 shows in United States venues and two in Canada. The tour was plagued with backlash regarding the controversy of John Lennon's remark about the Beatles being "more popular than Jesus", death threats, and the band's own dissatisfaction with the noise levels and their ability to perform live. Their speaking out against the Vietnam War added further controversy to the visit.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: The band played to large audiences in open-air stadiums throughout the tour, but ticket sales were hindered by the "Jesus" controversy. The US press reported a less frenzied response from the group's fans and speculated on the end of Beatlemania. Having already decided to retire from live performances at the end of the year, the 1966 US tour was the last series of commercial concerts undertaken by the Beatles. Thereafter, they continued as a studio-only band and focused exclusively on record production.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, announced the band's intention to tour the United States in early March 1966 while in New York. Taking place in August, it was the band's third annual summer tour of the US. The shows formed the second leg of a world tour, following concerts in June and July in West Germany, Japan and the Philippines.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: When in Tokyo, the Beatles received death threats and, aside from their professional engagements, were confined to their hotel suite. In Manila, they were manhandled by citizens and military personnel for a perceived slight to Filipino First Lady Imelda Marcos. Believing that their tours had grown too large and complex for Epstein to manage, the band decided to abandon touring following the upcoming US concerts. When asked what the group planned to do after their ordeal in Manila, George Harrison said: "We're going to have a couple of weeks to recuperate before we go and get beaten up by the Americans."


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: Plans for the tour were jeopardised in late July by the reaction to John Lennon's comments that the Beatles had become "more popular than Jesus".<ref name="Fricke/MojoSpecial">Fricke, David. "The Holy War". In: .</ref> Lennon made the remark to Maureen Cleave of the London "Evening Standard" in February, during his interview for the newspaper's "How Does a Beatle Live?" series. Cleave noted Lennon's interest in Christianity and religions, to which he replied:


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: His comments caused little concern in the UK nor in the US, initially. On 29 July, however, the US teen magazine "Datebook" reproduced Cleave's article, with the "I don't know which will go first – rock 'n' roll or Christianity!" remark placed prominently on the cover, provoking outrage among Christian fundamentalists, particularly in the US South. Led by WAQY in Birmingham, Alabama, several radio stations there organised bonfires where listeners were invited to burn their Beatles records and merchandise, and programmers initiated a ban on the band's music.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: In an attempt to quell the furore, Epstein flew to New York and gave a press conference on 5 August. The controversy followed that surrounding the butcher cover originally used in June for the Beatles' North American LP "Yesterday and Today". Soon withdrawn by Capitol Records, the cover was said to convey the band's opposition to the Vietnam War. The publication of Paul McCartney's comment, from a 1 August radio interview, that Americans were obsessed with money furthered the mood of disquiet surrounding the Beatles. In his press conference, Epstein said that he was prepared to cancel shows if any American promoter wished to back out, but that all the individuals were keen for the tour to go ahead. According to Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall, none of the promoters chose to cancel their events.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: Early August was also marked by race riots in Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha and Philadelphia, and by news of a killing spree in Texas carried out by Charles Whitman, a former US Marine. Derek Taylor, the band's former press officer and a music publicist in California, wrote in his column for "Disc and Music Echo" that "America is not too settled at the moment and I don't think it is any time for the Beatles to be here." Reporting in London for "The Village Voice", Richard Goldstein stated that "Revolver", the Beatles' new album, was ubiquitous around the city, as if Londoners were uniting behind the band in response to the bad press emanating from the US. He said there was a "genuine anxiety" among fans for the group's safety and quoted one, a New Yorker, as saying, "If anything happens to them, man, it's World War III."<ref name="Goldstein/VV"></ref>


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: The US shows were in the package-tour format typical of the 1960s. The support acts throughout the tour were the Ronettes, the Cyrkle, Bobby Hebb and the Remains.<ref name="Eden/MojoSpecial">Eden, Dawn. "Thanks, Goodnight". In: .</ref> The latter also served as the backing group for the Ronettes and Hebb.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: The Beatles' set lasted around 30 minutes and was almost identical to that performed in their June–July concerts. The sole difference was that "Long Tall Sally" replaced "I'm Down" as the closing number. None of the tracks from "Revolver" were included due to the difficulty in reproducing their sophisticated studio sounds and arrangements in a concert setting. "Paperback Writer" was therefore the only 1966 recording represented in the set. In the altered release schedules imposed by Capitol for North America, however, "Nowhere Man" and the "Yesterday and Today" track "If I Needed Someone" were also first issued in 1966, having been part of the December 1965 LP "Rubber Soul" in other markets.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: A handpicked press corps accompanied the Beatles, travelling with the band members and filing reports for their organisations. Among these were British disc jockeys Kenny Everett, Ron O'Quinn and Jerry Leighton; "TeenSet" editor Judith Sims, representatives from "Teen Life" magazine and Hearst Newspapers, and "Datebook" editor Art Unger; and a group of American DJs that included Jim Stagg and George Klein.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: When the band arrived in Chicago on 11 August for the start of the tour, Epstein and press officer Tony Barrow arranged a press conference at the Astor Tower Hotel to address the controversy and for Lennon to explain himself. Lennon stated that he was only commenting on the decline among churchgoers, that he made a mistake in using the Beatles' following in comparison with that of organised religion, and that he "never meant it as a lousy anti-religious thing". Parts of the press conference were broadcast on all the major US television networks and by ITV in the UK.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: In a private meeting with Art Unger, Epstein asked him to surrender his press pass for the tour, to avoid accusations that "Datebook" and the Beatles' management had orchestrated the controversy as a publicity stunt. Unger refused and, in his account, received Lennon's full support when he later discussed the meeting with him.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: The apology placated many of those offended by the "Datebook" article; WAQY called off its Beatle bonfire, planned for 19 August, and some stations lifted their radio bans. The controversy nevertheless hung over the entire tour and overshadowed the US release of "Revolver" and its accompanying single, "Eleanor Rigby" / "Yellow Submarine". Lennon continued to be asked about the topic in subsequent press conferences, often visibly exasperating not only him, but his bandmates as well.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: The first serious crowd disturbance occurred at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium, where the Beatles performed to nearly 30,000 on 14 August. As they started to play "Day Tripper", over 2,000 fans broke through the security barriers separating the audience from the area housing the elevated stage, causing the Beatles to stop the performance and shelter backstage. Thirty minutes passed before security was restored and the show resumed. Commentators likened the episode to the race riots that had taken place in the east of Cleveland shortly beforehand, and substantial damage was done to the stadium.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: Following their concert at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on 28 August, the Beatles were unable to leave the venue for about two hours. Around 100 private security personnel had been assigned to control the crowd of 45,000 fans, 7,000 of whom broke through the fencing and thwarted the band's exit in an armoured van. The Beatles remained trapped in a dressing room until, after two unsuccessful attempts to fool the crowd using decoy vehicles, they were able to escape with assistance from the local police. Some fans were injured and others arrested in clashes with the police.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: The tour's only stopover in the Bible Belt was Memphis, Tennessee, where two shows were scheduled at the Mid-South Coliseum for 19 August. The city council there voted to cancel the afternoon and evening concerts rather than have "municipal facilities be used as a forum to ridicule anyone's religion". The Ku Klux Klan nailed a Beatles LP to a wooden cross, vowing "vengeance", and conservative groups staged further public burnings of Beatles records. Epstein nevertheless went ahead with the shows, which were preceded by further threats to the group. Members of the Ku Klux Klan demonstrated outside the venue on 19 August, and around 8,000 locals took part in an anti-Beatles rally elsewhere in the city.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: Although no problems took place during the afternoon show, an audience member threw a lit firecracker onstage that did not hit any of the members, but the band believed that somebody had tried to shoot them. When the firecracker went off, Barrow recalled that "everybody, all of us at the side of the stage, including the three Beatles on stage, all looked immediately at John Lennon. We would not at that moment have been surprised to see that guy go down. John had half-heartedly joked about the Memphis concert in an earlier press conference, and when we got there everything seemed to be controlled and calm, but underneath somehow, there was this nasty atmosphere. It was a very tense and pressured kind of day."


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: Lennon and Harrison had warned Epstein that they were no longer prepared to stay silent about pressing political issues such as the Vietnam War. The controversy surrounding Lennon's "Jesus" remarks reinforced their determination to speak out and furthered the Beatles' standing in the emerging counterculture. At the time, 90 per cent of Americans still supported their country's involvement in the conflict.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: Having first voiced the group's opposition to the Vietnam War during their stay in Tokyo, Lennon caused further controversy during the band's press conference in Toronto on 17 August when he stated his support for American draft-dodgers escaping to Canada. When the band arrived in New York on 22 August, Lennon again criticised US participation in the war. All four Beatles publicly denounced the war as "wrong". At Shea Stadium the following day, the pre-show press conference descended into an argument between members of the media over the Beatles' opposition to the war.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: The Beatles' final paid concert of their career took place on 29 August at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California. The band played to an audience of 25,000, leaving 7,000 tickets unsold. A local company called Tempo Productions was in charge of the arrangements. Due to the reduced ticket sales and the expense of paying the Beatles their prearranged $50,000 performance fee, in addition to having to hire an orchestra to satisfy the local musicians union, the concert resulted in a loss for the company. At 9:27 pm, the Beatles took the stage and proceeded to play their eleven-song set.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: McCune Sound Services of San Francisco provided the sound system for the concert. The company's log-book entry for the job includes the note: "Bring everything you can find!" Mort Field, who mixed the sound from a dugout at the venue, recalled that the Beatles were so unconcerned about sound quality that Ringo Starr chose to sing into the counterweight of the heavy boom stand microphone set up at his drum kit, rather than the microphone itself.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: Knowing that this would be their last concert, members of the band took measures of their own to capture their last moments on stage. Each brought a camera and McCartney asked Barrow to make a rough audio tape recording from the field. The recording of this final concert is now widely circulated on bootlegs. "Long Tall Sally" on the bootlegs is not complete, due to Barrow not flipping the tape over during the show. Barrow gave the original tape of the Candlestick Park concert to McCartney. He also made a single copy, which was kept in a locked drawer in Barrow's office desk.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: After the show, the Beatles were quickly taken to the airport in an armoured car. They flew from San Francisco to Los Angeles, arriving at 12:50 am. During the flight, Harrison was heard to say: "That's it, then. I'm not a Beatle anymore." The first band member to tire of Beatlemania, Harrison later said of the group's decision to quit touring: "We'd been through every race riot, and every city we went to there was some kind of a jam going on, and police control, and people threatening to do this and that … and [us] being confined to a little room or a plane or a car. We all had each other to dilute the stress, and the sense of humour was very important … But there was a point where enough was enough."


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: Author Jonathan Gould comments on the significance of the Beatles ending their careers as live performers in San Francisco, since the city was the location for the first Human Be-in in January 1967. This and similar events were sponsored by the Family Dog collective, whose vision was to make San Francisco "America's Liverpool".


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: Typically of the era, newspaper coverage of the concerts focused on the size of the audiences, the volume of the fans' screams, and box office takings, rather than attempting to review each event or discuss the music. Throughout the tour, the US press seized on the opportunity to predict the end of Beatlemania and remarked on the absence of the usual crowds of screaming fans at the airports on their itinerary. The high-pitched screaming synonymous with Beatlemania was reduced, but most of the shows were still marked by wild crowd behaviour. In their comments during the tour, Lennon and Harrison each said that their American audiences included more young males than before, a development that Harrison welcomed as a reason for the reduced screaming and attributed to the band's musical growth on "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver". The Beatles' ability to appeal to both sexes in this way helped codify a new youth movement in the US, which sought expression in student demonstrations at Berkeley from late 1966 onwards.


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: The tour was affected by the prevailing mood of controversy and there were rows of empty seats at some venues. The Beatles held a second successful concert at New York's Shea Stadium, following the world-record attendance they set there in August 1965, although ticket sales were down to 45,000, around 10,000 below the previous year. Author Nicholas Schaffner later wrote that although the numbers at Shea fell short of the 1965 total, the Beatles' ability to sell as many tickets as they did in 1966 was still "a feat nobody else at the time could have come near to duplicating".


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: On 28 August, the day of the band's penultimate concert, Epstein issued a press release in response to claims that some of the shows had been poorly attended:


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: This tour compares phenomenally well with last year's. It's much better all round this year, from the point of view of increased interest and we are actually playing to bigger audiences. Here in Los Angeles, for example, 36,000 people saw the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl [in August 1965]. Today's concert at Dodger Stadium is attracting 10,000 more. People have been saying things about diminishing popularity, but all one can go by is attendances, which are absolutely huge. By the time we leave, 400,000 people will have seen this series of shows ...


title: The Beatles' 1966 US tour

text: Lasting around 30 minutes, the Beatles' set list for the tour was as follows (lead singers appear in parenthesis):


title: As Tears Go By (film)

text: As Tears Go By is a 1988 Hong Kong action crime drama film starring Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung and Jacky Cheung. The film was the directorial debut of Wong Kar-wai, and was inspired by Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets". The central plot revolves around a small-time triad member trying to keep his friend out of trouble. The film was screened at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, during International Critics' Week.


title: As Tears Go By (film)

text: Wah is a mob enforcer who primarily deals with debt collection. His subordinate, Fly, is less successful and not as well respected as Wah. Fly frequently causes trouble and borrows money he can't pay back. Out of the blue, Wah receives a call from his aunt, informing him that his younger cousin Ngor, whom he has never met, will be coming to stay with him in Hong Kong for the next few days. Ngor, who works at her family's restaurant on Lantau Island, must come to Hong Kong for a medical procedure.


title: As Tears Go By (film)

text: Soon after Ngor arrives at his apartment, Wah has to leave to help Fly collect a debt. After the job, Wah goes to see his girlfriend, Mabel, who dumps him. Because he had been so distant and unresponsive, she had aborted his baby. Wah had not even been aware she was pregnant in the first place and reacts badly. Wah stumbles home angry and drunk, but when Ngor tries to console him later that night, he becomes very aggressive and threatens to throw her out. The next morning, Wah apologizes to Ngor and offers to take her out to a movie to make up for his behavior.


title: As Tears Go By (film)

text: In order to make money to pay off a loan to a fellow gang member, Tony, Fly makes an unreasonably high bet in a game of snooker. When he realizes there is no chance he can win or pay his debt, he makes a run for it with his friend Site. After being chased through the streets, Fly and Site are caught and severely beaten by members of Tony's gang. As Wah and Ngor are about to leave the apartment, Fly arrives, bruised and bloody and carrying an unconscious Site. Wah and Ngor treat their wounds, and Ngor starts to questions Wah's line of work. The next day, she returns to Lantau, leaving Wah a note asking him to come to visit her sometime.


title: As Tears Go By (film)

text: Wah meets with Tony to settle Fly's debt. Tony says to Wah that if Fly wasn't his friend he would already be dead. Unable to pay the interest on the debt, Wah steals the money from the owner of the establishment Tony was hired to protect. Insulted by Wah's behavior, Tony takes his grievance to Uncle Kwan, the mob boss, who forces Tony and Wah to accept a monthly payment compromise. Afterward, Kwan tells Wah to get Fly under control before he gets himself killed. Accepting that Fly is not cut out for mob work, Wah gets him a legitimate job selling fishballs from a food cart.


title: As Tears Go By (film)

text: After accidentally meeting Mabel and finding out she is now married, Wah decides to visit Ngor. Arriving at her family's restaurant in Lantau, he learns that she is in Kowloon for the day and will return that evening. Wah meets Ngor at the ferry terminal and learns that she has begun seeing her doctor. Over the next couple of days, Wah helps out at the restaurant and his relationship with Ngor evolves. Meanwhile, Tony visits Fly to insult him and his new job. Fly wrecks Tony's car in retaliation, but Tony's gang promptly catches him and beats him near to death. Wah has to cut his visit with Ngor short, after receiving a call from Tony demanding money in exchange for Fly's life.


title: As Tears Go By (film)

text: Arriving at Tony's place, Wah surprises Tony by threatening him. Tony gives in to Wah's demands and lets Fly go. Wah urges Fly to return to his family in the countryside, which Fly refuses to do. Leaving the bar, they are attacked by Tony and his gang and severely beaten. Fly leaves Wah, telling Wah to forget him because he has been a terrible friend. Wah manages to return to Lantau where Ngor and her doctor treat his wounds. He recovers, and the two rekindle their relationship.


title: As Tears Go By (film)

text: Back in Hong Kong, Uncle Kwan gives Tony a job to assassinate an informant. Tony is afraid to do the job since it is essentially a suicide mission. Fly offers to take the job in order to humiliate Tony, whose thugs abandon him in disgust. Hearing Fly has taken this job, Wah returns to confront him, and attempts in vain to persuade Fly not to do it. Wah arrives at the police station just as Fly is about to carry out the assassination. Fly shoots the informant but fails to kill him. Instead, he is shot and killed by the police. Wah grabs Fly's gun and kills the informant, finishing the job. As Wah is gunned down, he thinks of his first kiss with Ngor.


title: As Tears Go By (film)

text: The film debuted on the Blu-ray format in the United States on January 20, 2009. The disc, released by MegaStar, has since gone out of print.


title: As Tears Go By (film)

text: The film was released on Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection on March 23, 2021 in a collection of 7 Wong Kar-wai films.


title: As Tears Go By (film)

text: During its initial Hong Kong theatrical run, "As Tears Go By" grossed HK$11,532,283. Until the release of "The Grandmaster" in January 2013, it was Wong Kar-wai's highest-grossing film in Hong Kong.


title: Digital Markets Act

text: Regulation (EU) 2022/1925, commonly referred to as the Digital Markets Act (DMA) is an EU regulation that aims to make the digital economy fairer and more contestable. The regulation proposed by the European Commission in December 2020 was signed into law by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU in September 2022. It entered into force on 1 November 2022 and will become applicable, for the most part, on 2 May 2023.


title: Digital Markets Act

text: The DMA intends to ensure a higher degree of competition in the European Digital Markets, by preventing large companies from abusing their market power and by allowing new players to enter the market. Once implemented, it will establish a list of obligations for designated Gatekeepers and in case of non-compliance, there will be enforced sanctions mechanisms, including fines of up to 10% of the worldwide turnover.


title: Digital Markets Act

text: This regulation targets the largest digital platforms operating in the European Union. They are also known as "Gatekeepers" due to the "durable" market position in some digital sectors and because they also meet certain criteria related to the number of users, their turnovers, or capitalisation. Even if the list of Gatekeepers has not been released yet, "Big Tech" (Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, Microsoft) are likely to be the main subjects of the act, but not the only ones.


title: Digital Markets Act

text: The list of obligations would include prohibitions on combining data collected from two different services belonging to the same company (e.g. Facebook and WhatsApp); provisions for the protection of platforms' business users (including advertisers and publishers); legal instruments against the self-preferencing methods used by platforms for promoting their own products (preferential results for Google's products when using Google Search); articles concerning the pre-installation of some services (Android); regulation related to bundling practices; provisions for ensuring interoperability, portability, and access to data for businesses and end-users of platforms.


title: Digital Markets Act

text: According to the European Commission, the main objective of this regulation is to regulate the behaviour of the Big Tech firms within the European Single Market and beyond. The Commission aims to guarantee a fair level of competition ("level playing field") on the highly concentrated digital European markets, which are often characterised by a "winner takes all" configuration.


title: Digital Markets Act

text: The DMA covers eight different sectors and they are also known as Core Platforms Services (CPS). Due to the presence of Gatekeepers who, to a certain degree, affect the market contestability, the CPS are considered problematic by the European Commission: online search engines (e.g. Google Search); online intermediation services (e.g. Google Play Store, Apple's App Store); social networks (e.g. Facebook); video sharing platforms (e.g. YouTube); communication platforms (e.g. WhatsApp, Gmail); advertising services (e.g. Google Ads); operating systems (e.g. Android, iOS); cloud services (e.g. Amazon Web Services).


title: Digital Markets Act

text: The present rules applied within the European Union with regard to digital markets are derived from European and national legislation. Under these circumstances, the basis for competition rules in the EU is established by Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Article 101 addresses anti-competitive agreements and concerted practices that may affect trade between members states or reduce competition in the common market. Article 102 aims to tackle the abuse of dominant positions. All players operating in the common market are therefore subject to these provisions. European and national authorities have identified the need to strengthen the current legislation, given the structural problems that are not covered. In addition, the case law of the CJEU is also an important aspect that should be mentioned, given its dynamic nature and the clarifications brought through the latest rulings.


title: Digital Markets Act

text: The Digital Markets Act is in line with the legislative developments undertaken by the Junker Commission between 2014 and 2019. During his mandate, there have been implemented 28 legislative proposals on the Digital Single Market, covering the following areas: Digital Culture, Digital Future, Digital Life, Digital Trust, Digital Shopping, and Digital Connectivity. These proposals were put forward with the scope to adapt the European legislation to the current challenges, while ensuring the free movement of persons and capital. These legislative developments contribute to the enforcement of long-term strategies in the European digital sector. For example, these modifications have led to the implementation of 35 new measures designated to boost connectivity, the data economy and digital public services, and they also aim to enhance digital rights in an integrated manner.


title: Digital Markets Act

text: One of the most important pieces of EU digital legislation is represented by the EU copyright rules. This has led to the protection, payment, and recognition of workers in thirty-three sectors and it aims to reward creativity, stimulate investment in the creative sector. Another relevant achievement can be considered the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2016. This regulation sets out the new European framework for the use and circulation of personal data and has a significant impact on the major digital players. In addition, the regulation on platform-to-business trading practices (P2B) has been established to create a fair, transparent and predictable business environment for smaller businesses and traders on online platforms. This regulation has applied in July 2020 and prevents market distortion, encourages healthy competition and prohibits unfair practices.


title: Digital Markets Act

text: The Digital Markets Act proposal was submitted by the European Commission to the European Parliament and to the Council of the European Union on 15 December 2020. Along with the Digital Services Act (DSA), the DMA is part of the Commission's European Digital Strategy entitled "Shaping Europe's Digital Future". The proposals were presented by the Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age, Margrethe Vestager, and by the European Commissioner for Internal Market, Thierry Breton, as members of the Von der Leyen Commission.


title: Digital Markets Act

text: On 23 November 2021, the Parliament's Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) adopted its position on the DMA proposal, and the text was adopted in plenary session of the European Parliament on 15 December 2021. The approved text became the Parliament's mandate for negotiations with the Council, which started under the French presidency of the Council in the first half of 2022. On 25 November 2021, the Council agreed its negotiating position, providing the Presidency with a mandate for the discussions.