"Zack & Wiki" received mostly positive reviews, gaining a score of 87 on metacritic. Praised for reviving the point-and-click genre, IGN called it "an unpredictably top-quality undertaking whose winning marriage of sometimes-genius environmental puzzles and beautiful graphics will suck you in."
IGN gave "Zack & Wiki" their "Adventure Game of the Year" 2007 award, while Nintendo Power ranked it was 7th on their best Wii games list.
Pendulum
A pendulum is a mass (any object usually metal) on an arm. The arm is attached to a "pivot", which is a point to swing from. The mass will naturally hang down because of gravity, but if it is pushed to one side it will "oscillate", which means that it will swing from side to side. The frequency of the swinging pendulum stays the same.
We can work out the time taken for one full oscillation (for example, swinging from left to right and back to left). We shall call this time formula_1 the period. If the pendulum length is formula_2, and the acceleration due to gravity is formula_3, then:
formula_4
where π (a Greek letter pronounced 'pi') is a mathematical constant. This equation gives a good approximation for the period when the mass does not swing far from the middle. The period of a pendulum does not depend on the mass of the object.
The mechanical energy of a pendulum is constant and is the sum of the kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy.
The regular motion of the pendulum can be used for timekeeping, and pendulums are used to regulate pendulum clocks.
Finnix
Finnix is a Debian based Live CD Linux distribution, developed by Ryan Finnie and intended for system administrators for tasks such as filesystem recovery, network monitoring and OS installation. Finnix is a small Linux Distribution, with an ISO download size of approximately 100 MiB.
Finnix was created in 1999, making it one of the oldest Linux distributions with the intent of being run completely from a bootable CD (the other Live CD around at the time was the Linuxcare Bootable Business Card CD, first released in 1999). Finnix 0.01 was based on Red Hat Linux 6.1, and was created to help with administration and recovery of other Linux workstations around Finnie's office..
On 23 October 2005, Finnix 86.0 was released. Earlier unreleased versions (84, and 85.0 through 85.3) were "Knoppix remasters", with support for Linux LVM and dm-crypt being the main reason for creation. However, 86.0 was a departure from Knoppix, and was derived directly from the Debian "testing" tree.
Finnix is released as a small bootable CD ISO. A user can download the ISO, burn the image to CD, and boot into a text mode Linux environment. Finnix requires at least 32MiB RAM to run properly, but can use more if present. Most hardware devices are detected and dealt with automatically, such as hard drives, network cards and USB devices. A user can modify files nearly anywhere on the running CD via UnionFS, a filesystem that can stack a read-write filesystem (in this case, a dynamic ramdisk) on top of a read-only filesystem (the CD media). Any changes made during the Finnix session are transparently written to RAM and discarded upon shutdown. In addition, Finnix uses SquashFS to keep distribution size low.
Finnix can be run completely within RAM, provided the system has at least 192 MiB RAM available.
Notes:
Gibraltar (Linux distribution)
Gibraltar Firewall was a Linux distribution based on Debian. Gibraltar is used to secure local area networks as a firewall software. The last version is 3.0, published on 2010-04-14.
Dr. Rene Mayrhofer made Gibraltar Firewall in 1999. Since January 2003, the company eSYS Information Systems is responsible for the development of Gibraltar.
Gibraltar Linux is based on free Software, which was enhanced by a web based administration tool. For running the firewall, no hard disk is needed, because Gibraltar is able to start up and run directly off CDROM. Configuration data can be stored on floppy disk or USB sticks.
Since version 2.4, Gibraltar is also available in combination with several hardware platforms. On this appliances, Gibraltar boots up from compact flash.
The core parts of Gibraltar are:
Mandible
The mandible is a bone found in all jawed vertebrates. The name comes from Latin "mandibula".
In bony fish the lower jaw is made of a number of bones, but these were gradually reduced in evolution.
In humans and other mammals the mandible is simply the jawbone or dentary, which is the largest and strongest bone of the face.
In mammals bones formerly in the lower jaw have become the ear ossicles.
Homo heidelbergensis
Homo heidelbergensis ("Heidelberg Man") is the name given to a number of human fossil remains that are older than fossils of Neanderthals. "Homo heidelbergensis" is abbreviated H. heidelbergensis.
Scientists are not sure whether these remains are from a distinct species. They are fragments (small pieces of bones), and most cannot be dated exactly. In the older texts they were simply called archaic humans or "early "Homo sapiens.""
There have been relatively well-defined remains of "Homo erectus" found in Africa from very early in human history. There have also been well-defined remains of "Homo neanderthalensis" found in Europe from later in history. Some scholars use the terms "archaic humans," "early "Homo sapiens,"" or "Homo heidelbergensis" to describe remains that seem to come from between these two periods in history. Some authors use it for all early species of "Homo", including Neanderthals.
In 1907, an archaeologist found a fossil of a lower jaw in Mauer, near Heidelberg, Germany. Some scientists thought this lower jaw was so different from any other species that it belonged to an undiscovered species. They named this species "Homo heidelbergensis".
Later, archaeologists found remains in Arago, France, and Petralona, Greece, that they said were from "Homo heidelbergensis". The best evidence found for these hominids is from between 600,000 and 400,000 years ago. The stone tools used by "H. heidelbergensis" were very similar to the Acheulean tools used by "Homo erectus".
"Homo heidelbergensis" may be the direct ancestor of both "Homo neanderthalensis" in Europe and "Homo sapiens". Some experts believe that "Rhodesian Man," found in Africa, belongs to the group "Homo heidelbergensis".
"Homo antecessor" and "H. heidelbergensis" may have had the same ancestor: "Homo ergaster" from Africa. Mostly, "H. ergaster" was not very different from "H. heidelbergensis". However, "H. heidelbergensis" had a larger brain-case. On average, their skulls had a volume of 1100 – 1400 cm³ of space inside. (The average modern human has 1350 cm³ of space inside his or her skull.) "H. heidelbergensis" also had more advanced tools and behavior than "H. ergaster". For these reasons, H. heidelbergensis has been classified as a separate species.
"H. heidelbergensis" was taller and more muscular than modern humans. Male "heidelbergensis" averaged about tall and . Females averaged and .
Cut marks on wild deer, elephants, rhinos, and horses show that "H. heidelbergensis" hunted, killed, and butchered these animals. Some of these animals weighed as much as 700 kg (1,500 lb) or more.
During this era, now-extinct wild animals like mammoths, European lions, and Irish elk lived on the European continent.
Recent findings in Atapuerca suggest that "H. heidelbergensis" may have been the first species of the "Homo" genus to bury their dead. However, scientists still argue over whether this is true.
Some experts believe that "H. heidelbergensis", like its descendant "H. neanderthalensis," learned a primitive form of language.
Scientists have not found any forms of art or sophisticated artifacts made by "H. heidelbergensis", other than stone tools. However, archaeologists have found red ochre, a mineral that can be used to create a red pigment which can be used as a paint. They found this possible paint at Terra Amata excavations in the south of France.