Cone (software)

Cone is a text-based e-mail client and news client for Unix-like operating systems. It is developed by the Courier Mail Server developers. Its name stands for "console newsreader and emailer".

Notable features include support for Unicode and support for SMAP.

References

Conical hill

A conical hill (also cone or conical mountain) is a landform with a distinctly conical shape. It is usually isolated or rises above other surrounding foothills, and is often, but not always, of volcanic origin.

Conical hills or mountains occur in different shapes and are not necessarily geometrically-shaped cones; some are more tower-shaped or have an asymmetric curve on one side. Typically, however, they have a circular base and smooth sides with a gradient of up to 30°. Such conical mountains are found in all volcanically-formed areas of the world such as the Bohemian Central Uplands in the Czech Republic, the Rhön in Germany or the Massif Central in France.

Term

Cone cell

Cone cells, or cones, are one of two types of photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye. They are responsible for color vision and function best in relatively bright light, as opposed to rod cells, which work better in dim light. Cone cells are densely packed in the fovea centralis, a 0.3 mm diameter rod-free area with very thin, densely packed cones which quickly reduce in number towards the periphery of the retina. There are about six to seven million cones in a human eye and are most concentrated towards the macula.

A commonly cited figure of six million in the human eye was found by Osterberg in 1935. Oyster's textbook (1999) cites work by Curcio et al. (1990) indicating an average close to 4.5 million cone cells and 90 million rod cells in the human retina.

Cones are less sensitive to light than the rod cells in the retina (which support vision at low light levels), but allow the perception of colour. They are also able to perceive finer detail and more rapid changes in images, because their response times to stimuli are faster than those of rods. Cones are normally one of the three types, each with different pigment, namely: S-cones, M-cones and L-cones. Each cone is therefore sensitive to visible wavelengths of light that correspond to short-wavelength, medium-wavelength and long-wavelength light. Because humans usually have three kinds of cones with different photopsins, which have different response curves and thus respond to variation in colour in different ways, we have trichromatic vision. Being colour blind can change this, and there have been some verified reports of people with four or more types of cones, giving them tetrachromatic vision. The three pigments responsible for detecting light have been shown to vary in their exact chemical composition due to genetic mutation; different individuals will have cones with different color sensitivity. Destruction of the cone cells from disease would result in blindness.

Cone (linear algebra)

In linear algebra, a (linear) cone is a subset of a vector space that is closed under multiplication by positive scalars. In other words, a subset C of a real vector space V is a cone if and only if λx belongs to C for any x in C and any positive scalar λ of V (or, more succinctly, if and only if λC = C for any positive scalar λ).

A cone is said to be pointed if it includes the null vector (origin) 0; otherwise it is said to be blunt. Some authors use "non-negative" instead of "positive" in this definition of "cone", which restricts the term to the pointed cones only. In other contexts, a cone is pointed if the only linear subspace contained in it is {0}.

The definition makes sense for any vector space V which allows the notion of "positive scalar" (i.e., where the ground field is an ordered field), such as spaces over the rational, real algebraic, or (most commonly) real numbers.

The concept can also be extended for any vector space V whose scalar field is a superset of those fields (such as the complex numbers, quaternions, etc.), to the extent that such a space can be viewed as a real vector space of higher dimension.

Software (novel)

Software is a 1982 cyberpunk science fiction novel written by Rudy Rucker. It won the first Philip K. Dick Award in 1983. The novel is the first book in Rucker's Ware Tetralogy, and was followed by a sequel, Wetware, in 1988.

Plot summary

Software introduces Cobb Anderson as a retired computer scientist who was once tried for treason for figuring out how to give robots artificial intelligence and free will, creating the race of boppers. By 2020, they have created a complex society on the Moon, where the boppers developed because they depend on super-cooled superconducting circuits. In that year, Anderson is a pheezer — a freaky geezer, Rucker's depiction of elderly Baby Boomers — living in poverty in Florida and terrified because he lacks the money to buy a new artificial heart to replace his failing, secondhand one.

As the story begins, Anderson is approached by a robot duplicate of himself who invites him to the Moon to be given immortality. Meanwhile, the series' other main character, Sta-Hi Mooney the 1st — born Stanley Hilary Mooney Jr. — a 25-year-old cab driver and "brainsurfer", is kidnapped by a gang of serial killers known as the Little Kidders who almost eat his brain. When Anderson and Mooney travel to the Moon together at the boppers' expense, they find that these events are closely related: the "immortality" given to Anderson turns out to be having his mind transferred into software via the same brain-destroying technique used by the Little Kidders.

Software (band)

Software was a German electronic duo active between 1984 and 2000, comprising Peter Mergener (born 1951) and Michael Weisser (born 1948). Formerly the duo used the name Mergener&Weisser.

History

The group released their records under the IC (Innovative Communication) label, which also released a number of other electronic musicians, including Klaus Schulze and the Neue Deutsche Welle group Ideal.

From 1990 to 1992 Weisser produced, during a temporary break with Mergener, four albums under the Software name with a different group composition: Fragrance with Klaus Schulze and Georg Stettner (born 1970), and Modesty-Blaze I / II and Cave with Billy Byte (Stephan Töteberg).

After the dissolution of Software in 1999, the two musicians went their separate ways: Peter Mergener continues to compose and play electronic music, while Michael Weisser first founded the group G.E.N.E. (Grooving Electronic Natural Environments), and is currently, among other things, active as a media artist.

Software 2000

Software 2000 was a video game developer and publisher based in Germany.

The company was formed in 1987 in Eutin, Schleswig-Holstein, by brothers Andreas and Marc Wardenga. They produced and published games for various formats, originally the Atari ST and Amiga platforms, and later for the PC, Game Boy Color and a few titles for the PlayStation.

Perhaps their most successful venture was the Bundesliga Manager series, based on the German soccer premier league. They also produced a series of "Artventure" interactive fiction games, in the German language. In the mid-1990s they produced other spinoff manager games, including Eishockey Manager (Ice Hockey Manager) and the Pizza Syndicate series for the PC. They also developed the puzzle game Swing, released for the PlayStation in 1998.

The company produced several titles with small development teams. This proved fatal with the rising standards of full priced games. With falling sales and important figures leaving the company, Software 2000 filed for bankruptcy in 2002.