the-french-artist/wikipedia_20220301.simple_sentence_split huggingface dataset:
There are special features for numbers, including ranges (70..73), prices, temperatures, money/unit conversions ("10.5 cm in inches"), calculations ( 3*4+sqrt(6)-pi/2 ), package tracking, patents, area codes, and language translation of displayed pages.
The order of search results (ghits for Google hits) on Google's search-results pages is based, in part, on a priority rank called a "PageRank".
Google Search provides many options for customized search (see below: Search options), using Boolean operators such as: exclusion ("-xx"), inclusion ("+xx"), alternatives ("xx OR yy"), and wildcard ("x * x").
The PageRank algorithm instead analyses human-generated links, assuming that web pages linked from many important pages are themselves likely to be important.
The algorithm computes a recursive score for pages, based on the weighted sum of the PageRanks of the pages linking to them.
PageRank is thought to correlate well with human concepts of importance.
In addition to PageRank, Google over the years has added many other secret criteria for determining the ranking of pages on result lists, reported to be over 200 different indicators.
The details are kept secret due to spammers and in order to maintain an advantage over Google's competitors.
The exact percentage  of the total of web pages that Google indexes is not known, as it is very hard to actually calculate.
Google not only indexes and caches web pages but also takes "snapshots" of other file types, which include PDF, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Flash SWF, plain text files, and so on.
Except in the case of text and SWF files, the cached version is a conversion to (X)HTML, allowing those without the corresponding viewer application to read the file.
Users can customize the search engine, by setting a default language, using the "SafeSearch" filtering technology and set the number of results shown on each page.
Google has been criticized for placing long-term cookies on users' machines to store these preferences, a tactic which also enables them to track a user's search terms and retain the data for more than a year.
For any query, up to the first 1000 results can be shown with a maximum of 100 displayed per page.
The ability to specify the number of results is available only if "Instant Search" is not enabled.
If "Instant Search" is enabled, only 10 results are displayed, regardless of this setting.
Non-indexable data
Despite its immense index, there is also a considerable amount of data available in online databases which are accessible by means of queries but not by links.
This so-called invisible or deep Web is minimally covered by Google and other search engines.
The deep Web contains library catalogs, official legislative documents of governments, phone books, and other content which is dynamically prepared to respond to a query.
Privacy in some countries forbids the showing of some links.
For instance in Switzerland any individual can force Google Inc. to delete a link which contains their name.
Google optimization
Since Google is the most popular search engine, many webmasters have become eager to influence their website's Google rankings.
An industry of consultants has arisen to help websites increase their rankings on Google and on other search engines.
This field, called search engine optimization, attempts to discern patterns in search engine listings, and then develop a methodology for improving rankings to draw more searchers to their client's sites.
Search engine optimization encompasses both "on page" factors (like body copy, title elements, H1 heading elements and image alt attribute values) and Off Page Optimization factors (like anchor text and PageRank).
The general idea is to affect Google's relevance algorithm by incorporating the keywords being targeted in various places "on page", in particular the title element and the body copy (note: the higher up in the page, presumably the better its keyword prominence and thus the ranking).
Too many occurrences of the keyword, however, cause the page to look suspect to Google's spam checking algorithms.
Google has published guidelines for website owners who would like to raise their rankings when using legitimate optimization consultants.
Google search consists of a series of localized websites.
The largest of those, the google.com site, is the top most-visited website in the world.
Some of its features include a definition link for most searches including dictionary words, the number of results you got on your search, links to other searches (e.g. for words that Google believes to be misspelled, it provides a link to the search results using its proposed spelling), and many more.
Search syntax
Google's search engine normally accepts queries as a simple text, and breaks up the user's text into a sequence of search terms, which will usually be words that are to occur in the results, but one can also use Boolean operators, such as: quotations marks (") for a phrase, a prefix such as "+", "-" for qualified terms, or one of several advanced operators, such as "site:".
The webpages of "Google Search Basics" describe each of these additional queries and options (see below: Search options).
Google's Advanced Search web form gives several additional fields which may be used to qualify searches by such criteria as date of first retrieval.
All advanced queries transform to regular queries, usually with additional qualified terms.
Query expansion
Google applies query expansion to the submitted search query, transforming it into the query that will actually be used to retrieve results.
As with page ranking, the exact details of the algorithm Google uses are deliberately obscure, but certainly the following transformations are among those that occur:
Term reordering: in information retrieval this is a standard technique to reduce the work involved in retrieving results.
This transformation is invisible to the user, since the results ordering uses the original query order to determine relevance.
Stemming is used to increase search quality by keeping small syntactic variants of search terms.
There is a limited facility to fix possible misspellings in queries.
"I'm Feeling Lucky"
Google's homepage includes a button labeled "I'm Feeling Lucky".
When a user clicks on the button the user will be taken directly to the first search result, bypassing the search engine results page.
The thought is that if a user is "feeling lucky", the search engine will return the perfect match the first time without having to page through the search results.
According to a study by Tom Chavez of "Rapt", this feature costs Google $110 million a year as 1% of all searches use this feature and bypass all advertising.
On October 30, 2009, for some users, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button was removed from Google's main page, along with the regular search button.
Both buttons were replaced with a field that reads, "This space intentionally left blank."
This text faded out when the mouse was moved on the page, and normal search functionality is achieved by filling in the search field with the desired terms and pressing enter.
A Google spokesperson explains, "This is just a test, and a way for us to gauge whether our users will like an even simpler search interface."
Personalized Google homepages retained both buttons and their normal functions.
On May 21, 2010, the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button was replaced with a button reading the words "Insert Coin".
After pressing the button, the user would begin a Google-themed game of Pac-Man in the area where the Google logo would normally be.
Pressing the button a second time would begin a two-player version of the same game that includes Ms. Pacman for player 2.
This version can be accessed at http://www.google.com/pacman as a permanent link to the page.
On 12 May 2009, Google announced that they would be parsing the hCard, hReview, and hProduct microformats and using them to populate search result pages with what they called "Rich Snippets".
Besides the main search-engine feature of searching for text, Google Search has more than 22 "special features" (activated by entering any of dozens of trigger words) when searching:
weather – The weather conditions, temperature, wind, humidity, and forecast, for many cities, can be viewed by typing "weather" along with a city for larger cities or city and state, U.S. zip code, or city and country for smaller cities (such as: weather Lawrence, Kansas; weather Paris; weather Bremen, Germany).
stock quotes – The market data for a specific company or fund can be viewed, by typing the ticker symbol (or include "stock"), such as: CSCO; MSFT; IBM stock; F stock (lists Ford Motor Co.); or AIVSX (fund).
Results show inter-day changes, or 5-year graph, etc.
This does not work for stock names which are one letter long, such as Citigroup (C) or Macy's (M) (Ford being an exception), or are common words, such as Diamond Offshore (DO) or Majesco (COOL).
time – The current time in many cities (worldwide), can be viewed by typing "time" and the name of the city (such as: time Cairo; time Pratt, KS).
sports scores – The scores and schedules, for sports teams, can be displayed by typing the team name or league name into the search box.
unit conversion – Measurements can be converted, by entering each phrase, such as: 10.5 cm in inches; or 90 km in miles
currency conversion – A money or currency converter can be selected, by typing the names or currency codes (listed by ISO 4217): 6789 Euro in USD; 150 GBP in USD; 5000 Yen in USD; 5000 Yuan in lira (the U.S. dollar can be USD or "US$" or "$", while Canadian is CAD, etc.).
calculator – Calculation results can be determined, as calculated live, by entering a formula in numbers or words, such as: 6*77 +pi +sqrt(e^3)/888 plus 0.45.
The user is given the option to search for the formula, after calculation.
The calculator also uses the unit and currency conversion functions to allow unit-aware calculations.
For example, "(3 EUR/liter) / (40 miles/gallon) in USD / mile" calculates the dollar cost per mile for a 40 mpg car with gas costing 3 euros a liter.
The caret "^" raises a number to an exponent power, and percentages are allowed ("40% of 300").
numeric ranges – A set of numbers can be matched by using a double-dot between range numbers (70..73 or 90..100) to match any positive number in the range, inclusive.
Negative numbers are treated as using exclusion-dash to not match the number.
dictionary lookup – A definition for a word or phrase can be found, by entering "define" followed by a colon and the word(s) to lookup (such as, "define:philosophy")
maps – Some related maps can be displayed, by typing in the name or U.S. ZIP code of a location and the word "map" (such as: New York map; Kansas map; or Paris map).
movie showtimes – Reviews or movie showtimes can be listed for any movies playing nearby, by typing "movies" or the name of any current movie into the search box.
If a specific location was saved on a previous search, the top search result will display showtimes for nearby theaters for that movie.
These listings however are sometimes totally incorrect and there is no way to ask Google to correct them; for example, on 25 July, for the El Capitan Theatre, google showtimes lists Up but according to the El Capitan website, the only movie playing that day is G-Force.
public data – Trends for population (or unemployment rates) can be found for U.S. states & counties, by typing "population" or "unemployment rate" followed by a state or county name.
real estate and housing – Home listings in a given area can be displayed, using the trigger words "housing", "home", or "real estate" followed by the name of a city or U.S. zip code.
travel data/airports – The flight status for arriving or departing U.S. flights can be displayed, by typing in the name of the airline and the flight number into the search box (such as: American airlines 18).
Delays at a specific airport can also be viewed (by typing the name of the city or three-letter airport code plus word "airport").
package tracking – Package mail can be tracked by typing the tracking number of a Royal Mail, UPS, Fedex or USPS package directly into the search box.
Results will include quick links to track the status of each shipment.
patent numbers – U.S. patents can be searched by entering the word "patent" followed by the patent number into the search box (such as: Patent 5123123).
area code – The geographical location (for any U.S. telephone area code) can be displayed by typing a 3-digit area code (such as: 650).
synonym search – A search can match words similar to those specified, by placing the tilde sign (~) immediately in front of a search term, such as:  ~fast food.
U.S. Government search – Searching of U.S. government websites can be performed from webpage: www.google.com/unclesam.
The webpages maintained by the Google Help Center have text describing more than 15 various search options.
The Google operators:
OR – Search for either one, such as "price high OR low" searches for "price" with "high" or "low".
"-" – Search while excluding a word, such as "apple -tree" searches where word "tree" is not used.
"+" – Force inclusion of a word, such as "Name +of +the Game" to require the words "of" & "the" to appear on a matching page.
"*" – Wildcard operator to match any words between other specific words.
Some of the query options are as follows:
define: – The query prefix "define:" will provide a definition of the words listed after it.
stocks: – After "stocks:" the query terms are treated as stock ticker symbols for lookup.
site: – Restrict the results to those websites in the given domain, such as, site:www.acmeacme.com.
The option "site:com" will search all domain URLs named with ".com" (no space after "site:").
allintitle: – Only the page titles are searched (not the remaining text on each webpage).
intitle: – Prefix to search in a webpage title, such as "intitle:google search" will list pages with word "google" in title, and word "search" anywhere (no space after "intitle:").
allinurl: – Only the page URL address lines are searched (not the text inside each webpage).
inurl: – Prefix for each word to be found in the URL; others words are matched anywhere, such as "inurl:acme search" matches "acme" in a URL, but matches "search" anywhere (no space after "inurl:").
The page-display options (or query types) are:
cache: – Highlights the search-words within the cached document, such as "cache:www.google.com xxx" shows cached content with word "xxx" highlighted.
link: – The prefix "link:" will list webpages that have links to the specified webpage, such as "link:www.google.com" lists webpages linking to the Google homepage.
related: – The prefix "related:" will list webpages that are "similar" to a specified web page.
info: – The prefix "info:" will display some background information about one specified webpage, such as, info:www.google.com.
Typically, the info is the first text (160 bytes, about 23 words) contained in the page, displayed in the style of a results entry (for just the 1 page as matching the search).
filetype: - results will only show files of the desired type (ex filetype:pdf will return pdf files)
Note that Google searches the HTML coding inside a webpage, not the screen appearance: the words displayed on a screen might not be listed in the same order in the HTML coding.
Some searches will give a 403 Forbidden error with the text
... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application.
To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.
We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon.
In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.
sometimes followed by a CAPTCHA prompt.
The screen was first reported in 2005, and was a response to the heavy use of Google by search engine optimization companies to check on ranks of sites they were optimizing.
The message is  triggered by high volumes of requests from a single IP address.
Google apparently uses the Google cookie as part of its determination of refusing service.
In June 2009, after the death of pop superstar Michael Jackson, this message appeared to many internet users who were searching Google for news stories related to the singer, and was assumed by Google to be a DDoS attack, although many queries were submitted by legitimate searchers.
January 2009 malware bug
Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously.
Google does this to protect users against visiting sites that could harm their computers.
For approximately 40 minutes on January 31, 2009, all search results were mistakenly classified as malware and could therefore not be clicked; instead a warning message was displayed and the user was required to enter the requested URL manually.
The bug was caused by human error.
The URL of "/" (which expands to all URLs) was mistakenly added to the malware patterns file.
On certain occasions, the logo on Google's webpage will change to a special version, known as a "Google Doodle".
Clicking on the Doodle links to a string of Google search results about the topic.
The first was a reference to the Burning Man Festival in 1998, and others have been produced for the birthdays of notable people like Albert Einstein, historical events like the interlocking Lego block's 50th anniversary and holidays like Valentine's Day.
Google Caffeine
With Caffeine, Google moved its back-end indexing system away from MapReduce and onto BigTable, the company's distributed database platform.
Caffeine is also based on Colossus, or GFS2, an overhaul of the GFS distributed file system.
In May 2010 Google rolled out SSL-encrypted web search.
The encrypted search can be accessed at: https://encrypted.google.com
Google Instant, an enhancement that displays suggested results while the user types, was introduced in the United States starting on September 8, 2010.
One concern is that people might select one of the suggested results instead of finishing their request, and that such a practice could cause bias toward familiar businesses or other search terms.
Pornographic or otherwise offensive search terms are excluded from the suggested results.
The instant feature appears only on the basic Google site and not specialized iGoogle pages.
Google expects Google Instant to save users 2 to 5 seconds in every search, which they say will be collectively 11 million seconds per hour.
Search engine marketing pundits speculated that Google Instant would have a great impact on local and paid search.
In concert with the Google Instant launch, Google disabled the ability of users to choose to see more than 10 search results per page.
Instant Search can be disabled via Google's "preferences" menu, but autocomplete-style search suggestions now cannot be disabled.
A Google representative stated, "It's in keeping with our vision of a unified Google search experience to make popular, useful features part of the default experience, rather than maintain different versions of Google.
As Autocomplete quality has improved, we felt it was appropriate to have it always on for all of our users."
Cambodian (Khmer)
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
English (United Kingdom)
English (United States)
Frisian (West)
Hausa
Laothian
Moldavian (Romanian)
Norwegian (Nynorsk)
Odia
Oromo
Portuguese (Brazil)
Portuguese (Portugal)
Runyakitara
Scots Gaelic
Sinhalese
Xhosa
In addition to the main URL Google.com, Google Inc. owns 160 domain names for each of the countries/regions in which it has been localized.
As Google is an American company, the main domain name can be considered as the U.S. one.
In addition to its tool for searching webpages, Google also provides services for searching images, Usenet newsgroups, news websites, videos, searching by locality, maps, and items for sale online.
In 2006, Google has indexed over 25 billion web pages, 400 million queries per day,  1.3 billion images, and over one billion Usenet messages.
It also caches much of the content that it indexes.
Google operates other tools and services including Google News, Google Suggest, Google Product Search, Google Maps, Google Co-op, Google Earth, Google Docs, Picasa, Panoramio, YouTube, Google Translate, Google Blog Search and Google Desktop Search.
There are also products available from Google that are not directly search-related.
Gmail, for example, is a webmail application, but still includes search features; Google Browser Sync does not offer any search facilities, although it aims to organize your browsing time.
List of Google products
List of search engines
Google Hacks from O'Reilly is a book containing tips about using Google effectively.
Now in its third edition. .
Google: The Missing Manual by Sarah Milstein and Rael Dornfest (O'Reilly, 2004).
How to Do Everything with Google by Fritz Schneider, Nancy Blachman, and Eric Fredricksen (McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2003).
Google Power by Chris Sherman (McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2005).
Blogpost.com, Evolution of Google Home Page from 1998 to 2008
Social Media And Google on Ranking Factors, Importance of Social media In google Searches
Infotopia--A Google Alternative Safe Search Engine for Students, A Google custom search engine accessing only academic web pages selected by teachers, librarians, and consortia
In audio engineering, a fade is a gradual increase (fade-in) or decrease (fade-out) in the level of an audio signal.
The term can also be used for film cinematography or theatre lighting, in much the same way (see: fade (filmmaking)).
A recorded song may be gradually reduced to silence at its end (fade-out), or may gradually increase from silence at the beginning (fade-in).
For example, the songs "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by The Verve and "Turn to Stone" by Electric Light Orchestra fade in from the beginning, while the songs "Born to Be Wild" by Steppenwolf, "Boogie Oogie Oogie" by A Taste of Honey, and "Hey Jude" by The Beatles fade out.
However, "Born to be Wild" and "Boogie Oogie Oogie" fade out in a matter of seconds, whereas "Hey Jude" takes over 2 minutes to completely fade out. "
Goodbye Stranger" by Supertramp takes about a minute to fade out.
Fading-out can serve as a recording solution for pieces of music that contain no obvious ending.
Though relatively rare, songs can fade out, then fade back in.
Some examples of this are "Helter Skelter" by The Beatles, "Suspicious Minds" by Elvis Presley, "Thank You" by Led Zeppelin or "Undercover of the Night" by The Rolling Stones.
The term fade is also used in multi-speaker audio systems to describe the balancing of power between front and rear channels.
Origins and early examples
"Neptune", part of the orchestral suite, The Planets, by Gustav Holst, was an early piece of music to have a fade-out ending.
Holst stipulates that the women's choruses are "to be placed in an adjoining room, the door of which is to be left open until the last bar of the piece, when it is to be slowly and silently closed", and that the final bar (scored for choruses alone) is "to be repeated until the sound is lost in the distance".
Although commonplace today, the effect bewitched audiences in the era before widespread recorded sound—after the initial 1918 run-through, Holst's daughter, Imogen (in addition to watching the charwomen dancing in the aisles during "Jupiter") remarked that the ending was "unforgettable, with its hidden chorus of women's voices growing fainter and fainter... until the imagination knew no difference between sound and silence".
The technique of ending a spoken or musical recording by fading out the sound goes back to the earliest days of recording.
In the era of mechanical (pre-electrical) recording, this could only be achieved by either moving the sound source away from the recording horn, or by gradually reducing the volume at which the performers were singing, playing or speaking.
With the advent of electrical recording, smooth and controllable fadeout effects could be easily achieved by simply reducing the input volume from the microphones using the fader on the mixing desk.
No single recording can be reliably identified as "the first" to use the technique.
In 2003, on the (now-defunct) website Stupid Question , John Ruch listed the following recordings as possible contenders:
A fader is any device used for fading, especially when it is a knob or button that slides along a track or slot.
A knob which rotates is usually not considered a fader, although it is electrically and functionally equivalent.
A fader can be either analogue, directly controlling the resistance or impedance to the source (e.g. a Potentiometer); or digital, numerically controlling a digital signal processor (DSP).
Digital faders are also referred to as virtual faders, since they can be viewed on the screen of a digital audio workstation.
Modern high-end digital mixers often have piezo-electric actuators attached to the faders such that they can be multi-use and will jump to the correct position for the selected function and/or saved setting.
Crossfading
A crossfader on a dj mixer essentially functions like two faders connected side-by-side, but in opposite directions.
It allows a DJ to fade one source out while fading another source in at the same time.
This is extremely useful when beatmatching two phonograph records or compact discs.
The technique of crossfading is also used in audio engineering as a mixing technique, particularly with instrumental solos.
A mix engineer will often record two or more takes of a vocal or instrumental part and create a final version which is a composite of the best passages of these takes by crossfading between each track.
In the perfect case the crossfader would keep constant output level.
However, there's no standard how this should be achieved.
Many DJ equipment manufacturers offer different mixers for different purposes (e.g. scratching, beatmixing, cut mixing, etc.).
High-end mixers often have crossfade curve switches allowing the DJ to select the type of crossfade necessary.
Experienced DJs are also able to crossfade between tracks using the channel faders.
There are many software applications that feature virtual crossfaders.
For instance, burning-software for the recording of audio-CDs.
Pre-fader, post-fader
If a send mix is configured pre-fader, then changes to the main channel strip fader does not affect the send mix.
This is useful for stage monitor mixes where changes in the Front of House channel levels would distract the musicians.
If a send mix is configured post-fader, then the level sent to the send mix follows changes to the main channel strip fader.
This is useful for reverberation and other signal processor effects.
Middleton, Richard (1990/2002).
Studying Popular Music, p. 95-6.
Philadelphia: Open University Press. .
WikiRecording's Article on Faders
The Centenary Medal is an award given by the Australian Government in 2001.
It was set up to celebrate the Centenary of Federation of Australia and to honour people who have made a contribution to Australian society or government.
Possible winners were studied by a group headed by the historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey.
The front of the medal has a seven-pointed Commonwealth Star, for the six Australian states, with the seventh point for Australia's territories.
At the centre of the star is an image showing the Indigenous Australian traditions at the heart of the continent.
Around the edge are 100 dots for 100 years of federation.
The other side has a seven pointed star, with the words "For Contribution Made to Australian Society" around the edge.
Bar and Ribbon
The colours in the ribbon are crimson, which represents federation, and blue and gold for the beginning of the 21st Century.
The seven gold and red lines signify the states' pathways to federation.
The bar and ribbon are the same so that a person with the award can be recognized easily.
Some medal winners
Jack Brabham, motor sport
Barry Marshall, Nobel Prize winner
Backspace is the keyboard key (sometimes labeled as:  ← ) that originally pushed the typewriter carriage one position backwards, and for modern computer screens, moves the cursor one position backwards, deletes the preceding character, and shifts back the text after it by one position.
In typewriters, a typist would, for example, type a lowercase letter "a" with acute accent (á) by typing a lowercase letter "a" then backspace, and then the acute accent key (also known as overstrike).
This is the basis for such spacing modifiers in computer character sets such as the ASCII caret (^, for the circumflex accent).
Backspace composition no longer works with digital displays or typesetting systems.
It has to some degree been replaced with the combining diacritical marks mechanism of Unicode, though such characters do not work well with many fonts, and precomposed characters continue to be used.
Some software like TeX or Microsoft Windows use the opposite method for diacritical marks, namely positioning the accent first, and then placing the base letter at that position.
Pressing the backspace key on a computer terminal would generate the ASCII code 08, BS or Backspace, a control code which would delete the preceding character.
That control code could also be accessed by pressing Control-H, as H is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet.
Terminals which did not have the backspace code mapped to the function of moving the cursor backwards and deleting the preceding character would display the symbols ^H (caret, H – see Caret notation) when the backspace key was pressed.
This sequence is still used humorously for epanorthosis by computer literates, denoting the deletion of a pretended blunder, much like a strikethrough.
My slave-dri^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hboss decided to stall the project.
A more concise alternative sometimes seen is ^W, which is the shortcut to delete the previous word in the Berkeley Unix terminal line discipline.
One ^W can replace a whole string of ^H's.
This shortcut has also made it into the Vi text editor.
For really embarrassing blunders, ^U (kill line) can outdo a series of ^W.
The backspace is distinct from the delete key, which in paper media for computers would punch out all the holes to strike out a character, and in modern computers deletes text following it.
Also, the delete key often works as a generic command to remove an object (such as an image inside a document, or a file in a file manager), while backspace usually has no effect.
In a mainframe environment, to backspace means to move a magnetic tape backwards, typically to the previous block.
Although the term "backspace" is the standard name of the key which deletes the character to the left of the cursor, the actual key may be labelled in a variety of ways, for example delete, Erase (for example in XO-1, One Laptop Per Child), or with a left pointing arrow.
Winners of the award included competitors, coaches, sports scientists, office holders, and people who maintained sporting facilities and services.
Over 18,000 Medals were awarded.
The medal is circular and made of nickel-silver with a highly polished finish.
The front design symbolises Australian sport showing the stars of the Southern Cross, and lines representing the athletics track at the Australian Sports Stadium.
The other side has the same lines as the front, and the words ‘to commemorate Australian sporting achievement’ appearing in the raised edge of the medal.
It is also marked with the year ‘2000’.
The medal hangs from a 32 mm ribbon by a connector piece and ring.
The ribbon’s colours are Australia’s national colours green and yellow.
It's an Honour  - Australian Government site
- Stanley Brooks (Australian Government Site)
2000 in Australia
Marin Mersenne, (born 8 September 1588, in modern-day Sarthe, died 1 September 1648, in Paris) was a French theologian and mathematician.
He developed the first laws of acoustics, which was known by his name for a long time.
Today, he is mainly remembered for the Mersenne primes.
Together with Galileo Galilei he built the laws which describe how a mass falls in an empty space.
He was in favour of modern science, and did not agree with "occultist" movements.
He often travelled to meet great scientists, which made him an important mediator.
This is especially true for mathematicians such as Pierre Gassendi, Gilles Personne de Roberval, Blaise Pascal und Pierre de Fermat.
To tell Mersenne of a discovery was like publishing it.
He told Gassendi to reply to the Meditations of Descartes.
Mersenne gave Huygens the idea of using a pendulum to measure time.
This led to the development of pendulum clocks.
The Land Transport Authority (Abbreviation: LTA; Chinese: 陆路交通管理局 (shortform: 陆交局); Malay: Penguasa Pengangkutan Darat; ) of Singapore is a statutory board of the Ministry of Transport.
It was founded in 1 September 1995, by merging four agencies, which are Registry of Vehicles, Mass Rapid Transit Corporation, Roads & Transportation Division of the Public Works Department of Singapore and Land Transport Division of the then-Ministry of Communications.
LTA leads the development of land transport in Singapore.
is the percentage (%) of viewers at a group of websites who use a particular web browser.
For example, when it is said that Internet Explorer has 7% usage share (April 2018), it means that some version of Internet Explorer is used by nearly 7 of every 100 visitors who visit a given set of websites.
Accuracy issues
Overestimation
Not all requests are generated by a user, as a user agent can make requests at regular time intervals without user input.
In this case the user's activity might be overestimated.
A web browser that refreshes the webpage at a regular time interval.
A feed reader that requests the RSS or Atom feed at a regular time interval.
Extra files like CSS hacks and JavaScript hacks are often sent to Internet Explorer.
Gecko-based browsers (such as Firefox) can prefetch linked web pages, potentially increasing hits.
Link prefetching in Gecko-based browsers is used on pages with enhanced markup, including Google search results.
A user who revisits a site shortly after changing or upgrading browsers may be double-counted under some methodologies; overall numbers at the time of a new version's release may be skewed.
Certain anti-virus products fake their user-agent to appear to be popular browsers.
This is done to trick attack sites that might display clean content to the scanner, but not to the browser.
The Register reported in June 2008 that traffic from AVG Linkscanner, using an IE6 user-agent, outstripped human link clicks by nearly 10 to 1.
Many types of software, such as Web validators or crawlers, fetch web pages, and send fictitious user-agent strings to appear more like normal traffic.
Browsers such as Safari maintain a dashboard of frequently visited sites.
This generates hits to those sites on browser start or at times on launch of a new tab, in order to update the thumbnail images.
Underestimation
A graphical browser typically results in more hits than a text browser, as it downloads files referred to by the HTML document (e.g., images, CSS, and JavaScript).
Many browsers and download managers spoof a different user agent string to the web server to prevent erroneous or malicious browser sniffing which could result in receiving broken or incompatible code, or being completely blocked, and thus increasing the statistics for other browsers (as an example, prior to version 9, the Opera web browser had "Identify as Internet Explorer" as the default user setting).
Sometimes you can detect these spoofing browsers based on other things but some people do not do it. (
An example is Internet Explorer Mobile which ships in Windows Mobile 6.1.4 and 6.5 with the default user agent string as IE6 Windows XP.
Internet Explorer Mobile can be identified by looking at the other HTTP Headers)
Text-based and audio-based browsers do not download any web bugs at all.
Gecko-based browsers since Firefox 1.5 and Opera use fast Document Object Model (DOM) caching.
JavaScript is only executed on pageload from net or disk cache, but not if it is loaded from DOM cache.
This can have an impact on JavaScript based tracking of browser statistics.
Some browser extensions and security programs (such as the popular Firefox extension NoScript) block JavaScript, Adobe Flash, Applets and some forms of HTML (HTML blocked through ClearClick) for non-whitelisted sites.
This may also affect JavaScript based tracking of browser statistics.
Many browsers accessing a site via one proxy are apt to be counted as only one access if the proxy caches the result; it is usual for browsers on mobile phones in particular to access the web via proxies (many of which violate HTTP's specifications for proxies; even if a web bug is designed to work despite proxying, the proxies run by mobile operators may well mislead it).
While most browsers generate additional page hits by refreshing web pages when user navigates back through page history, some browsers (such as Opera) reuse cached content without resending requests to the server.
Generally, the more faithfully a browser implements HTTP's cache specifications, the more it will be under-reported relative to browsers that implement those specifications poorly.
Plug-ins may change, or append text to, the User Agent string.
This can lead to Browser Detection flaws.
User Agents are not guaranteed to be a certain format.
As an example of the inconsistency, almost every User Agent pretends to be Mozilla 5.0.
Some ISPs, mainly mobile phone carriers, have begun stripping the user agent strings.
Historical usage share
Net Applications (2004 Q4 to present)
On 2009-08-01, Net Applications began weighting its raw data based on the number of internet users in the countries concerned, using data from the CIA ; the changes were applied retroactively to older data.
The table below uses weighted data from 2007 Q4 onwards.
W3Counter (May 2007 to present)
StatCounter (July 2008 to present)
Statcounter statistics are directly derived from hits (not unique visitors) from 3 million sites using Statcounter totalling more than 15 billion hits per month.
No artificial weightings are used.
StatCounter Europe (July 2008 to present)
StatOwl.com (September 2008 to present)
Clicky (Late September 2009 to present)
Older reports
Wikimedia (April 2009 to June 2010)
Wikimedia squid reports are based on server logs of about 4 billion page requests per month, based on the user agent information that accompanied the requests.
These server logs cover requests to the following Wikimedia Foundation projects: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikiversity and others.
TheCounter.com (2000 to 2009)
TheCounter.com identifies sixteen versions of six browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Netscape, and Konqueror).
Other browsers are categorised as either ‘Netscape compatible’ (including Google Chrome, which may also be categorized as 'Safari' due to its 'Webkit' subtag) or ‘unknown’.
Internet Explorer 8 is identified as Internet Explorer 7.
Monthly data includes all hits from 2008-02-01 until the end of the month concerned.
More than the exact browser type, this data identifies the underlying web rendering engine used by various browsers, and the table below aggregates them in the same column.
OneStat.com (April 2002 to March 2009)
ADTECH (Europe, 2004 to Q4 2009)
AT Internet Institute (Europe, July 2007 to June 2010)
AT Internet Institute was formerly known as XiTi.
WebSideStory (USA, February 1999 to June 2006)
GVU WWW user survey (January 1994 to October 1998)
EWS Web Server at UIUC (1996 Q2 to 1998)
ZD Market Intelligence (USA, January 1997 to January 1998)
Zona Research (USA, January 1997 to July 1998)
AdKnowledge (January 1998 to June 1998)
Dataquest (1995 to 1997)
International Data Corporation (USA, 1996 to 1997)
List of web browsers
Usage share, Market share
Chuck Upsdell's Browser Stats lists web stats from many different stats sources and gives the approximate current usage share of the most popular layout engines.
W3Schools' Browser Statistics lists the web stats only from the W3 Schools site, which gives the approximate usage share of browsers among "people with an interest for web technologies."
Wikimedia's most recent squid report lists web stats for Wikipedia and its sister projects.
ru:Браузер#Рыночные доли
Quatuor pour la fin du temps is a piece of chamber music by the French composer Olivier Messiaen.
In English -speaking countries it is often called by the English title Quartet for the End of Time.
The piece is written for an unusual combination of four instruments: clarinet (in B-flat), violin, cello, and piano.
There are 8 movements.
It takes about 50 minutes to perform.
The work was first performed in unusual circumstances in 1941.
It is a very important work in the history of 20th century classical music.
Composition and first performance
There was a special reason why Messiaen wrote this work for an unusual combination of instruments.
In 1940, when World War II was being fought, Germany invaded France.
Messiaen was captured by the German army and he was held as a prisoner of war.
While being taken to the prisoner of war camp, Messiaen talked to another prisoner, Henri Akoka, who was a clarinettist.
Messiaen showed him the sketches for a clarinet piece he was writing called  Abîme des oiseaux.
Two other professional musicians were also among the prisoners: Jean le Boulaire, a violinist and Étienne Pasquier, a cellist.
Messiaen composed the Quatuor for these three musicians with himself at the piano.
The combination of these four instruments is unusual,  although Paul Hindemith had written a work for the same combination in 1938.
The quartet was given its first performance in Görlitz, Germany (now called  Zgorzelec in Poland) on 15 January 1941.
The audience consisted of about four hundred  prisoners of war.
There were German prison officers sitting in front.
The music must have seemed strange to the audience, but they all listened politely.
Shortly after this Messiaen was released from prison and went back to France.
Messiaen was inspired by the words in the Bible where the angel says “There shall be time no longer”.
These words have another meaning in relation to the music, because Messiaen does not write music with a regular number of beats in a bar.
Like The Rite of Spring, the length of the bars keep changing.
Messiaen had heard enough of soldiers marching to a regular one-two-three-four-one-two-three-four during the war.
His rhythms in this music develop from little tiny rhythmic patterns
The first movement is called “Liturgie de cristal” (“Chyrstal liturgy”) and describes the birds waking up.
All four instruments play this movement.
“Song for the Angel who announces the end of time”.
It is played by the full quartet, although the clarinet does not play in the central section.
The third movement is called “Abîme des oiseaux” (“Abyss of birds”) and is just played by the clarinet.
It is extremely slow and the clarinettist needs a lot of breath control.
The fourth movement is “Intermède”  (“Interlude”) and is played by the violin, cello, and clarinet.).
It is fast and lively.
The fifth movement is “Louange à l'Éternité de Jésus (“Praise to the eternity of Jesus").
It is played by the cello accompanied by the piano who just plays chords.
It is again extremely slow and the cellist needs good bow control.
The sixth movement is called “Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes“ (“Dance of the Fury, for the seven trumpets”), played on all four instruments.
They play in unison (the same notes) nearly all the way through.
The seventh movement is called “Fouillis d'arcs-en-ciel, pour l'Ange qui annonce la fin du Temps" (“Tangle of rainbows, for the Angel who announces the end of time”),  played by the full quartet.
Some of the music from the second movement is repeated.
We hear the angel being covered by the rainbow.
The eighth movement is “Louange à l'Immortalité de Jésus" (“Praise to the immortality of Jesus"), for violin and piano.
We hear the ascent of man to his god.
The violin finishes on a very high harmonic note.
In the long preface at the front of the score Messiaen writes a short introduction to the music theory theory of his music.
He describes the rhythms he uses and how they relate to one another.
However, at the end, he says that it is not necessary to read all about his theory in order to perform the piece.
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The national parks of New Zealand are 14 protected areas that are looked after by the Department of Conservation "for the benefit, use, and enjoyment of the public".
These are popular among tourists, with 30% of tourists visiting at least one national park during their stay in New Zealand.
While the national parks contain some of New Zealand's most beautiful scenery, the first few that were created were all focused on mountains.
Since the 1980s more different kinds of New Zealand landscapes have been included in the national parks.
New Zealand's national parks are all important to preserve both nature and culture, and some are also historically important.
Tongariro National Park is one of 27 World Heritage Sites that is of both cultural and natural significance, and four of the South Island national parks form Te Wahipounamu, another World Heritage Site.
National Parks Act
The National Parks Act of 1980 was written to record what national parks are for, and how they would be chosen and looked after.
It begins by explaining what a national park is:
The National Parks Act goes on to say that the public will be allowed to enter and use the parks freely, but with rules to avoid destroying the native plants and animals or the parks.
Access to specially protected areas (550 km²) as noted under the act is only allowed with special permits.
National parks are soil, water and forest conservation areas, and should be kept as natural as possible.
Native plants and animals are to be looked after and other plants and animals removed if they harm the natural wildlife.
Development in what the act calls "wilderness areas" is only foot tracks and huts used for wild animal control or scientific research.
Services available for public use
The Act allows the Department of Conservation to provide hostels, huts, camping grounds, ski tows and other services, parking areas, roading and tracks within the parks.
As well as these, the department also provides some accommodation, transport and other services at entry points to the parks, but these are also offered by others.
Other services within the parks, such as guided walks and skiing tutorials, are provided by other companies, sometimes with help from the department.
List of national parks
Proposed national park
The area around Waipoua Forest, north of Dargaville, was suggested to become a new Kauri National Park.
The area contains most of New Zealand's remaining kauri, including the largest known kauri, Tāne Mahuta.
These stands of kauri are also important because they are homes for many endangered species including the North Island brown kiwi.
This proposal is currently being considered by the Department of Conservation.
Mining concerns
In 2010 the New Zealand Government proposed removing some national park and conservation areas from Schedule 4 protection of the Crown Minerals Act which means that mining is not allowed in those areas.
In July the government decided against the proposal after receiving a large number of submissions, most of which were against mining.
National Park information at the Department of Conservation
Lists of national parks
Oceania-related lists
Plumbaginaceae is a family of flowering plants are about 560 species in 10 genera found all over the world.
They are annual or perennial herbs, shrubs and climbers.
Thrift (Armeria) and Sea Lavender (Limonium), have small flowers in dense clusters.
They are generally grown for garden decoration or as cut flowers, either fresh or dried, and medicinal extracts are obtained from some species.
Polygonaceae is a family of flowering plants are herbs, shrubs, or rarely trees comprising about 30 genera and 1,000 species.
The leaves are simple, alternate or rarely opposite, and usually stipulate.
Some well known members include buckwheat (Fagopyrum), sorrel (Rumex), rhubarb (Rheum), and knotweed (Polygonum).
Charles is a boy's name of German origin.
There are many famous people named Charles:
Charles Aznavour, Armenian-French singer