Hostage

A hostage is a person or entity which is held by one of two belligerent parties to the other or seized as security for the carrying out of an agreement, or as a preventive measure against war. However, in contemporary usage, it means someone who is seized by a criminal abductor in order to compel another party such as a relative, employer, law enforcement, or government to act, or refrain from acting, in a particular way, often under threat of serious physical harm to the hostage(s) after expiration of an ultimatum.

A person who seizes one or more hostages is known as a hostage-taker; if the hostages are present voluntarily, then the receiver is known as a host.

Historical hostage practices

The English word "hostage" derives from French ostage, modern otage, from Late Latin obsidaticum (Medieval Latin ostaticum, ostagium), the state of being an obses (plural obsides), "hostage", from Latin obsideō ("I haunt / frequent / blockade / besiege"), but an etymological connection was later supposed with Latin hostis ("stranger," later "enemy"). This long history of political and military use indicates that political authorities or generals would legally agree to hand over one or usually several hostages in the custody of the other side, as guarantee of good faith in the observance of obligations. These obligations would be in the form of signing of a peace treaty, in the hands of the victor, or even exchange hostages as mutual assurance in cases such as an armistice. Major powers, such as Ancient Rome and the British who had colonial vassals, would especially receive many such political hostages, often offspring of the elite, even princes or princesses who were generally treated according to their rank and put to a subtle long-term use where they would be given an elitist education or possibly even a religious conversion. This would eventually influence them culturally and open the way for an amicable political line if they ascended to power after release.

Hostage (disambiguation)

A hostage is a person or entity held by a captor.

Hostage, The Hostage or Hostages may also refer to:

In film and television

In literature

CSI: NY (season 4)

The fourth season of CSI: NY originally aired on CBS between September 2007 and May 2008. It consisted of 21 episodes, only 14 of which were completed before the Writers' Strike. Seven more episodes were made after the strike, and they began airing in April 2008. Its regular time slot continued on Wednesdays at 10pm/9c.

CSI: NY The Fourth Season was released on DVD in the U.S. on September 23, 2008.

Cast

Main cast

Recurring cast

Episodes

References

External links

Screen

Screen or Screens may refer to:

Arts

Filtration / selection processes

Media and music

Screen (magazine)

Screen is a leading weekly film magazine, published in India. Established in 1951, it is owned by The Indian Express publishing group. The content focuses on India's Hindi film industry, a.k.a. Bollywood, located mainly in Mumbai. It also has an e-magazine version.

History

Screen was first published on 26 September 1951 with Manorama Katju as its managing editor. She was succeeded in 1959 by S.S. Pillai who died in office in 1977. The magazines was started by the Indian Express newspaper group.

B. K. Karanjia who was previously editor of Filmfare, stayed Screen editor for 10 years.Udaya Tara Nayar, rose the ranks within Screen Magazine and became the editor between 1988-1996 and 1998-2000. Veteran film journalist, Bhawana Somaaya was the editor of the magazine (2000-2007). In 2007 she was replaced by Ex- Society Magazine and HT Style/Saturday editor Priyanka Sinha Jha who remains the editor till date.

Screen Awards

Screen organizes and sponsors the Screen Awards for movies in Hindi cinema, established in 1995. It also sponsors Screen Gold Medal for excellence in direction at the Film and Television Institute, established in 1967.

Blend modes

Blend modes (or Mixing modes) in digital image editing are used to determine how two layers are blended into each other. The default blend mode in most applications is simply to hide the lower layer with whatever is present in the top layer. However, as each pixel has a numerical representation, a large number of ways to blend two layers is possible. Note that the top layer is not necessarily called a "layer" in the application. It may be applied with a painting or editing tool.

Most graphics editing programs, like Adobe Photoshop and GIMP, allow the user to modify the basic blend modes - for example by applying different levels of opacity to the top picture.

Normal blend mode

This is the standard blend mode which uses the top layer alone, without mixing its colors with the layer beneath it.

Where a is the value of a color channel in the underlying layer, and b is that of the corresponding channel of the upper layer. The result is most typically merged into the bottom layer using "simple" (b over a) alpha compositing, but other Porter-Duff operations are possible. The compositing step results in the top layer's shape, as defined by its alpha channel, appearing over the bottom layer.