Comp

Comp, COMP or Comps may refer to:

Science and technology

Music

Business and finance

Places

In France:

In England:

Other

Strong Bad

Strong Bad is a fictional character from the Homestar Runner series of animated Flash web cartoons. He is portrayed by Matt Chapman, the principal voice actor and co-founder of the series. Strong Bad enjoys pranking the other characters of the series, along with his ever-diligent lackey pet named "The Cheat" and his older brother Strong Mad. The main segment that Strong Bad is a part of is "Strong Bad Email", in which he answers emails sent to him by fans. The Strong Bad Email series grew to be so popular that seven DVDs featuring the emails have been released, as well as a podcast where emails could be downloaded to digital media players, since its first episode in 2001.

The character sports a red lucha libre mask with 4 laces in the back and a blue diamond in the center of his eyes. The diamond has the power to open bottle caps from "Cold Ones" and remove Homestar's hat, though he has only been seen doing this once. His eyes are green and shiny, and apparently turn grey when he is dead. Usually his mouth is a peach-colored rectangle when not speaking, and can form the shape of an "o" when using words with an "o" sound in them. He lacks a shirt (but wears certain ones on occasion), nipples, and a belly button. Strong Bad also has boxing gloves for hands, though mysteriously he can type with them in his Strong Bad Emails. He also wears black pants, along with red shoes with white soles that curve outward.

COMP128

The COMP128 algorithms are implementations of the A3 and A8 algorithms defined in the GSM standard. The A3 algorithm is used to authenticate the mobile station to the network. The A8 algorithm is used to generate the session key used by A5 to encrypt the data transmitted between the mobile station and the BTS.

Currently there exist four versions of COMP128. The first three were originally confidential. A partial description of the first version was leaked in 1997 and completed via reverse engineering. This led to a full publication in 1998. The second and third versions were obtained via reverse engineering of software which verifies SIM cards compliance.

Introduction

For details on the way A3 and A8 are used see Authentication Center.

A3 and A8 both take a 128-bit key (K_i) and a 128-bit challenge (RAND) as inputs. A3 produces a 32-bit response (SRES) and A8 produces a 64 bits session key (K_c).

The COMP128 algorithms combine the functionality of A3 and A8.

COMP128 algorithms

Several COMP128 algorithms were designed:

Gender

Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles), or gender identity.

Sexologist John Money introduced the terminological distinction between biological sex and gender as a role in 1955. Before his work, it was uncommon to use the word gender to refer to anything but grammatical categories. However, Money's meaning of the word did not become widespread until the 1970s, when feminist theory embraced the concept of a distinction between biological sex and the social construct of gender. Today, the distinction is strictly followed in some contexts, especially the social sciences and documents written by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, in many other contexts, including some areas of social sciences, gender includes sex or replaces it. Although this change in the meaning of gender can be traced to the 1980s, a small acceleration of the process in the scientific literature was observed in 1993 when the USA's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started to use gender instead of sex. In 2011, the FDA reversed its position and began using sex as the biological classification and gender as "a person's self representation as male or female, or how that person is responded to by social institutions based on the individual's gender presentation." In non-human animal research, gender is also commonly used to refer to the physiology of the animals.

Seaman

Seaman is a naval rank and is either the lowest or one of the lowest ranks in most navies around the world. In the Commonwealth it is the lowest rank in the navy, followed by able seaman and leading seaman, and followed by the petty officer ranks.

In the United States, it means the lowest three enlisted rates of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard, followed by the higher petty officer ranks. The equivalent of the seaman is the matelot in French-speaking countries, and Matrose in German-speaking countries.

The term "seaman" is also a general-purpose for a man or a woman who works anywhere on board a modern ship, including in the engine spaces, which is the very opposite of sailing. This is untrue in the US Navy where a sailor might be a seaman but not all US Navy sailors are a 'Seaman' as they might be an Airman, Fireman, Contructionman, or Hospital Corpsman. Furthermore, "seaman" is a short form for the status of an "able-bodied seaman," either in the navies or in the merchant marines. An able-bodied seaman is one who is fully trained and qualified to work on the decks and superstructure of modern ships, even during foul weather, whereas less-qualified sailors are restricted to remaining within the ship during times of foul weather — lest they be swept overboard by the stormy seas or by the high winds.

Closer (baseball)

In baseball, a closing pitcher, more frequently referred to as a closer (abbreviated CL), is a relief pitcher who specializes in getting the final outs in a close game when his team is leading. The role is often assigned to a team's best reliever. Before the 1990s, pitchers in similar roles were referred to as a fireman, short reliever, and stopper. A small number of closers have won the Cy Young Award. Dennis Eckersley, Rollie Fingers, Goose Gossage, Bruce Sutter and Hoyt Wilhelm are closers who have been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Usage

A closer is generally a team's best reliever and designated to pitch the last few outs of games when their team is leading by a margin of three runs or fewer. Rarely does a closer enter with their team losing or in a tie game. A closer's effectiveness has traditionally been measured by the save, an official Major League Baseball (MLB) statistic since 1969. Over time, closers have become one-inning specialists typically brought in at the beginning of the ninth inning in save situations. The pressure of the last three outs of the game is often cited for the importance attributed to the ninth inning.