Blowfish (company)

Blowfish is an online sex toy catalog offering erotic toys, books, supplies and videos.

History

Founded May 1, 1994, The Blowfish Corporation was one of the first online sex toy catalogs. With the motto "Good Products for Great Sex", Blowfish is known for their honest, thorough and often humorous reviews of their products. "We cater to the 'clean, well-lit' market," founder Christophe Pettus once remarked, "but we're also appealing to those who are old-fashioned enough to think that sex should be a little bit dirty."

Blowfish is also, according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian, known for carrying a number of "sex toys as art forms," often fashioned out of glass.

In 2003 Blowfish created Blowfish Video with their release of Clearly Sex, a video highlighting handmade acrylic sex toys created by local artist Cate Cox.

In 2005 Blowfish Video teamed up with Pink and White Productions and produced The Crash Pad, the first video directed by Shine Louise Houston. The Crash Pad was well received and lauded for featuring realistic lesbian sex. Later that year, The Crash Pad went on to win the 2005 Feminist Porn Award for Hottest Dyke Sex Scene.

Blowfish (cipher)

Blowfish is a symmetric-key block cipher, designed in 1993 by Bruce Schneier and included in a large number of cipher suites and encryption products. Blowfish provides a good encryption rate in software and no effective cryptanalysis of it has been found to date. However, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) now receives more attention.

Schneier designed Blowfish as a general-purpose algorithm, intended as an alternative to the aging DES and free of the problems and constraints associated with other algorithms. At the time Blowfish was released, many other designs were proprietary, encumbered by patents or were commercial or government secrets. Schneier has stated that, "Blowfish is unpatented, and will remain so in all countries. The algorithm is hereby placed in the public domain, and can be freely used by anyone."

Notable features of the design include key-dependent S-boxes and a highly complex key schedule.

The algorithm

Blowfish has a 64-bit block size and a variable key length from 32 bits up to 448 bits. It is a 16-round Feistel cipher and uses large key-dependent S-boxes. In structure it resembles CAST-128, which uses fixed S-boxes.

Introduction

Introduction, The Introduction, Intro, or The Intro may refer to:

Intro (R&B group)

Intro is an American R&B trio from Brooklyn, New York City, New York. The trio consisted of members Jeff Sanders, Clinton "Buddy" Wike and lead singer/songwriter Kenny Greene. Intro released two albums (for Atlantic Records): 1993's Intro and their second album, 1995's New Life. The group had a string of US hits in the 1990s. The hits included the singles "Let Me Be The One", the Stevie Wonder cover "Ribbon in the Sky", "Funny How Time Flies" and their highest charting hit, "Come Inside".

Intro's Kenny Greene died from complications of AIDS in 2001. Intro recently emerged as a quintet consisting of Clinton "Buddy" Wike, Jeff Sanders, Ramon Adams and Eric Pruitt. Adams departed in 2014, with the group back down to its lineup as a trio. They are currently recording a new album to be released in 2015. The group released a new single in 2013 called "I Didn't Sleep With Her" and a new single "Lucky" in October 2014.

Discography

Albums

Singles

References

Introduction (music)

In music, the introduction is a passage or section which opens a movement or a separate piece, preceding the theme or lyrics. In popular music this is often abbreviated as intro. The introduction establishes melodic, harmonic, and/or rhythmic material related to the main body of a piece.

Introductions may consist of an ostinato that is used in the following music, an important chord or progression that establishes the tonality and groove for the following music, or they may be important but disguised or out-of-context motivic or thematic material. As such the introduction may be the first statement of primary or other important material, may be related to but different from the primary or other important material, or may bear little relation to any other material.

A common introduction to a rubato ballad is a dominant seventh chord with fermata, Play  an introduction that works for many songs is the last four or eight measures of the song, Play  while a common introduction to the twelve-bar blues is a single chorus. Play