A fairy tale (pronounced /ˈfeəriˌteɪl/) is a type of short story that typically features European folkloric fantasy characters, such as dwarves, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, mermaids, trolls, or witches, and usually magic or enchantments. Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends (which generally involve belief in the veracity of the events described) and explicitly moral tales, including beast fables.
In less technical contexts, the term is also used to describe something blessed with unusual happiness, as in "fairy tale ending" (a happy ending) or "fairy tale romance" (though not all fairy tales end happily). Colloquially, a "fairy tale" or "fairy story" can also mean any far-fetched story or tall tale; it is used especially of any story that not only is not true, but could not possibly be true. Legends are perceived as real; fairy tales may merge into legends, where the narrative is perceived both by teller and hearers as being grounded in historical truth. However, unlike legends and epics, they usually do not contain more than superficial references to religion and actual places, people, and events; they take place once upon a time rather than in actual times.
"Fairytale" is a song introduced on the Pointer Sisters' May 1974 album release That's a Plenty; written by group members Anita Pointer and Bonnie Pointer, "Fairytale" became the second of the three Top 40 hits scored by the Pointer Sisters in their original embodiment as a quartet - Anita Pointer would sing lead on all three of these hits.
Anita Pointer has stated that she wrote this breakup song from personal experience: pre-stardom the Pointer Sisters had written and recorded radio spots, for which purpose they'd borrowed equipment from San Francisco radio station KSAN, and Anita had become romantically involved with a KSAN deejay who'd neglected to mention being married - "He lied to me so when I found out that's when that song 'came out' [ie. took shape]". "Fairytale" was written while the Pointer Sisters were on one of their earliest tours as support for Dave Mason: staying at a motel in Woodstock (NY) Anita was listening to a cassette by James Taylor - "I love him. I just think he’s so great. And I wrote Fairytale that night." At the conclusion of the tour with Mason, Anita gave what she'd written at the motel to Bonnie Pointer for polishing into the song which the Pointer Sisters recorded at Quadraphonic Studios in Nashville TN.
Me, You & the Music is the debut studio album by American recording artist Jessica Sanchez, released on April 30, 2013 by Interscope Records and 19 Entertainment. The album's lead single, "Tonight" features American R&B singer Ne-Yo and was released to all digital retailers on March 21, 2013. The song's accompanying music video was shot in downtown Los Angeles on March 1, 2013 with director Justin Francis.
Following the series finale of the eleventh season of American Idol Sanchez was signed to Interscope Records/19 Entertainment to begin work on her debut studio album. Recording for the album began during the American Idols Live Tour in mid July 2012. She worked with producers Mark J. Feist, Harvey Mason, Jr. and Toby Gad among others for the album. It was set to feature ballads but would exhibit "more of an R&B/Pop/Urban kind of feel". The album's recording and production wrapped in mid January 2013 where the final track listing was selected mixed and mastered. It was initially set for release on May 14, 2013, but this was later moved up to April 30. Fans of "American Idol" have gotten used to a full length debut from that season's winner and, typically, a few weeks later, an album from the year's runner-up. Season 11, however, was different, Sanchez was allowed more time on the project to craft the right sound and direction for the album.
A helix (pl: helixes or helices) is a type of smooth space curve, i.e. a curve in three-dimensional space. It has the property that the tangent line at any point makes a constant angle with a fixed line called the axis. Examples of helices are coil springs and the handrails of spiral staircases. A "filled-in" helix – for example, a spiral ramp – is called a helicoid. Helices are important in biology, as the DNA molecule is formed as two intertwined helices, and many proteins have helical substructures, known as alpha helices. The word helix comes from the Greek word ἕλιξ, "twisted, curved".
Helices can be either right-handed or left-handed. With the line of sight along the helix's axis, if a clockwise screwing motion moves the helix away from the observer, then it is called a right-handed helix; if towards the observer, then it is a left-handed helix. Handedness (or chirality) is a property of the helix, not of the perspective: a right-handed helix cannot be turned to look like a left-handed one unless it is viewed in a mirror, and vice versa.
Phelix is a high-speed stream cipher with a built-in single-pass message authentication code (MAC) functionality, submitted in 2004 to the eSTREAM contest by Doug Whiting, Bruce Schneier, Stefan Lucks, and Frédéric Muller. The cipher uses only the operations of addition modulo 232, exclusive or, and rotation by a fixed number of bits. Phelix uses a 256-bit key and a 128-bit nonce, claiming a design strength of 128 bits. Concerns have been raised over the ability to recover the secret key if the cipher is used incorrectly.
Phelix is optimised for 32-bit platforms. The authors state that it can achieve up to eight cycles per byte on modern x86-based processors.
FPGA Hardware performance figures published in the paper "Review of stream cipher candidates from a low resource hardware perspective" are as follows:
Phelix is a slightly modified form of an earlier cipher, Helix, published in 2003 by Niels Ferguson, Doug Whiting, Bruce Schneier, John Kelsey, Stefan Lucks, and Tadayoshi Kohno; Phelix adds 128 bits to the internal state.
Helix DNA is a project to produce computer software that can play audio and video media in various formats, aid in producing such media, and serve them over a network. It is intended as a largely free and open source digital media framework that runs on numerous operating systems and processors (including mobile phones) and was started by RealNetworks which contributed much of the code. The Helix Community is an open collaborative effort to develop and extend the Helix DNA platform.
Helix DNA Client is a software package for multi-platform multi-format media playback. Helix Player is a media player that runs on Linux, Solaris, Symbian and FreeBSD and uses the Helix DNA Client. The Helix DNA Producer application aids in the production of media files, and Helix DNA Server can stream media files over a network.
The code is released in binary and source code form under various licenses, notably the proprietary RealNetworks Community Source License and the free and open source software RealNetworks Public Source License. Additionally, the Helix DNA Client and the Helix Player are licensed under the popular GNU General Public License (GPL) free and open source license.