.africa

.Africa is the proposed Internet generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) for the African and Pan African communities and users wherever they may reside. The .africa gTLD serves as a regional domain for individuals and entities based in and out of Africa.

Status

The .Africa gTLD has not yet been delegated to any organization as registry operator. The .Africa application that was submitted by DotConnectAfrica Trust is now the subject of an unresolved disagreement with ICANN (DCA Trust vs ICANN) following an Independent Review Panel (IRP) Process that was invoked by DCA Trust under ICANN’s accountability mechanism in October 2013. The IRP was administrated by the International Center for Dispute Resolution (ICDR) of the American Arbitration Association (AAA) New York, US.

DCA Trust had passed all the new gTLD applicant evaluation criteria, but before the Initial Evaluation (IE) result was issued, a Governmental Advisory Committee GAC Objection Advice that had been issued in Beijing in April 2013 was later accepted by the ICANN Board in early June 2013 which caused the ICANN Board to instruct ICANN staff that DCA Trust’s .Africa new gTLD application will not be approved. This had caused the non-completion of the evaluation of DCA Trust’s application; which then led DCA Trust to challenge the ICANN Board decision through a series of accountability mechanism.

Africa (Petrarch)

Africa is an epic poem in Latin hexameters by the 14th century Italian poet Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca). It tells the story of the Second Punic War, in which the Carthaginian general Hannibal invaded Italy, but Roman forces were eventually victorious after an invasion of north Africa led by Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, the epic poem's hero.

Background

Africa and De viris illustribus were partially inspired by Petrarch's visit to Rome in 1337. According to Bergin and Wilson (p. ix). It seems very likely that the inspirational vision of the Eternal City must have been the immediate spur to the design of the Africa and probably De viris illustribus as well. After returning from his grand tour, the first sections of Africa were written in the valley of Vaucluse. Petrarch recalls

The fact that he abandoned it early on is not entirely correct since it was far along when he received two invitations (from Rome and from Paris) in September 1340 each asking him to accept the crown as poet laureate. A preliminary form of the poem was completed in time for the laurel coronation April 8, 1341 (Easter Sunday).

Africa (Perpetuum Jazzile album)

Africa is 2009 Perpetuum Jazzile album. By large most successful song from the album is a capella version of Toto's "Africa", the performance video of which has received more than 15 million YouTube views since its publishing in May 2009 until September 2013.

Track listing

References

Zebra (disambiguation)

Zebra is one of several species of the horse genus Equus whose members have distinctive stripes.

Zebra may also refer to:

Music

Computers

Zebra (chess)

The zebra is a fairy chess piece that moves like a stretched knight. When it moves, it can jump to a square that is three squares horizontally and two square vertically, or three squares vertically and two square horizontally, regardless of intervening pieces; thus, it is a (2,3)-leaper. Below, it is given the symbol J from Betza notation.

Value

The zebra by itself is worth just below two pawns (appreciably less than a knight), due to its restricted freedom of movement on an 8×8 board. Its larger move is the main reason why it is weaker than a camel on an 8×8 board, even though the camel is colorbound and the zebra is not. A zebra and a bishop and a king can force checkmate on a bare king; while a zebra, a knight and a king cannot; and a zebra, a camel, and a king cannot. The rook versus zebra endgame is a win for the rook. (All endgame statistics mentioned are for the 8×8 board.)

As a component of other pieces, it has about the same value as a knight (both pieces can move to eight squares), but its long move carries the danger of causing unstoppable attacks in the opening and winning large amounts of material. Ralph Betza opined that the zebra's move was too large to be functional on an 8×8 board, and that only on a 10×10 board or larger would it be worth its ideal value of about a knight.

ZEBRA (computer)

The ZEBRA (Zeer Eenvoudige Binaire Reken Automaat translated Very Simple Binary Automatic Calculator) was one of the first computers to be designed in the Netherlands, (the first one was the "ARRA") and one of the first Dutch computers to be commercially available. It was designed by Willem van der Poel of the Netherlands Post, Telegraph and Telephone, and first delivered in 1958. The production run consisted of fifty-five machines, manufactured and marketed by the British company Standard Telephones and Cables, Ltd.

The ZEBRA was a binary, two-address machine with a 33-bit word length. Storage was provided by a magnetic drum memory holding 8K words; accumulators were also implemented as recirculating drum tracks in a manner similar to that used in the Bendix G-15. Peripherals included paper tape reader and punch, and teleprinter.

Programming

The ZEBRA instruction word consists of a 13-bit drum address, a five-bit register (or I/O) address, and a 15-bit operation field. Each bit of the operation field had a distinct meaning and could be used in nearly any combination, leading to many elegant tricks that today might be considered the domain of microprogramming. Some bits made an instruction conditional on the accumulator state, as with the Zuse Z22 or Electrologica X1. Multiplication, division, square root, as well as all floating-point operations, were performed by subroutines, using the underlying serial computer ALU primitives add, subtract, shift right, shift left, and increment. Programming aids included the Normal Code (assembler), trace utility, a floating point interpretive system, the Simple Code, the Matrix Interpretive Scheme, and an Algol compiler.