Ceres (workstation)

The Ceres Workstation was a computer built by Niklaus Wirth's group around 1985. Ceres was a workstation based on the NS320xx a CPU by National Semiconductor. Ceres was a follow-up project to the Lilith, a machine based on AMD bit-slice technology and the programming language Modula-2. The operating system of Ceres, called "The Oberon System" was completely written in the programming language Oberon. It is an early example of an object oriented operating system utilizing garbage collection on the system level.

On the same hardware Clemens Szyperski implemented as part of his PhD an operating system, called ETHOS, which was taking full advantage of object oriented technologies. According to a posting of Clemens Szyperski on usenet the BlackBox Component Builder, formerly known as Oberon/F, incorporates many of his ideas and principles.

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Planetary Resources

Planetary Resources, Inc., formerly known as Arkyd Astronautics, is an American company that was formed in November 2010, and reorganized and renamed in 2012. Their stated goal is to "expand Earth's natural resource base" by developing and deploying the technologies for asteroid mining.

Although the long-term goal of the company is to mine asteroids, its initial plans call for developing a market for small (30–50 kg) cost-reduced space telescopes for both Earth observation and astronomy. These spacecraft would employ a laser-optical system for ground communications, reducing payload bulk and mass compared to conventional RF antennas. The deployment of such orbital telescopes is envisioned as the first step forward in the company's asteroid mining ambitions. The same telescope satellite capabilities that Planetary Resources hopes to sell to customers can be used to survey and intensively examine near-Earth asteroids.

A test satellite named Arkyd 3 Reflight (A3R) was launched and successfully transported to Earth orbit on 17 April 2015 and was deployed from the International Space Station via the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployer on July 16, 2015. The "Reflight" descriptor was used because Planetary's first satellite, Arkyd 3, was destroyed on October 28, 2014 after an Antares resupply rocket exploded seconds after launch.

Ceres (organization)

Ceres is a non-profit sustainability advocacy organization based in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1989, Ceres' mission is to "mobilize investor and business leadership to build a thriving, sustainable global economy". Ceres brings together disparate stakeholders - investors, companies and public interest groups - to accelerate and expand the adoption of sustainable business practices and solutions to build a healthy global economy.

In 2007, Ceres was named one of the 100 most influential players in corporate governance by Directorship magazine. Ceres was a recipient of the Skoll Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2006, as well as a recipient of the Fast Company Social Capitalist Awards in 2008. As of January 2014, its president is Mindy Lubber.

History

Ceres was founded in 1989 when Joan Bavaria, then-president of Trillium Asset Management, formed an alliance with leading environmentalists with the goal of changing corporate environmental practices. She named the organization the "Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies", or CERES, after the Roman goddess of fertility and agriculture.

Fuerteventura Airport

Fuerteventura Airport (IATA: FUE, ICAO: GCFV), also known as El Matorral Airport, is an airport serving the Spanish island of Fuerteventura. It is situated in El Matorral site, 5 km (3.1 mi) southwest of the capital city Puerto del Rosario.

History

Early years

The airport was opened officially on 14 September 1969. The first plane to touch down on the new runway was an Iberia Fokker F27, which flew the route Las Palmas-Fuerteventura-Lanzarote.

In 1973 El Matorral Airport began to operate its first flights to European countries with the airline Condor, which linked the German city of Düsseldorf directly with Puerto del Rosario. In the following years, the airport experienced considerable growth in the number of operations, which resulted in a series of improvements, starting in 1978, to ensure that the working of the aerodrome continued to meet the needs of the passengers.

Development since the 1990s

In 1992, the airport received more than 1,600,000 passengers, which made it necessary to carry out extensive refurbishment of the terminal and aircraft parking areas.

Maria (goose)

Maria is a maleToulouse Goose (Anser anser), formerly living in Echo Park, Los Angeles who became the subject of news reports in 2011 after forming an unusual association with a local resident, named Dominic Ehrler.

Maria, named by locals and assumed to be female, was familiar to users of the park for several years as a goose which preferred the company of humans to that of his own species, often pecking at homeless people or following walkers and runners around.

Ehrler, a retired salesman, first encountered Maria at Echo Park lake in the summer of 2010 when the bird began to follow him on his daily walks around the lake, readily accepting food from him and soon becoming so attached that he would wait beside the road every morning for Ehrler to arrive at the park. Maria would walk alongside and possessively 'protect' Ehrler from other park users and their dogs and would also attempt to follow him from the park, flying closely behind him as he rode away on his scooter, necessitating attempts to distract the goose, or lock him behind a fence when leaving, to avoid being followed all the way home.

Final Fantasy II

Final Fantasy II (ファイナルファンタジーII, Fainaru Fantajī Tsū) is a fantasy role-playing video game developed and published by Square (now Square Enix) in 1988 for the Family Computer as the second installment of the Final Fantasy series. The game has received numerous enhanced remakes for the WonderSwan Color, the Sony PlayStation, the Game Boy Advance, the PlayStation Portable, and multiple mobile and smartphone types. As neither this game nor Final Fantasy III were initially released outside Japan, Final Fantasy IV was originally released in North America as Final Fantasy II, so as not to confuse players. The most recent releases of the game are enhanced versions for the iOS and Android, which were released worldwide in 2010 and 2012, respectively.

The game's story centers on four youths whose parents were killed during an army invasion by the empire of Palamecia, who are using hellspawn to conquer the world. Three of the four main characters join a rebellion against the empire, embarking on missions to gain new magic and weapons, destroy enemy superweapons, and rescue leading members of the resistance. The Game Boy Advance remake adds a bonus story after the game is completed.

Maria (album)

Maria is a 1995 critically acclaimed album by Canadian singer and songwriter Jane Siberry. It was her first album not to include any musical contributions from longtime collaborators such as Ken Myhr, John Switzer and Rebecca Jenkins.

Information

The album ends with "Oh My My," a 20 minute-plus ode that gathers the themes from the entire album. Rolling Stone wrote: "[I]n this heap of Siberjazz you realize that everything that has arisen on Maria has indeed converged and that you've actually been led on an unforgettable walk in a garden facing fall with a tour guide who's sure-footed in her wobbly pace. Awesome."

Maria was her last major label album. In 1996, Siberry started her own independent record label, Sheeba Records, and has released all of her subsequent recordings on that imprint.

Reception

Rolling Stone wrote about Maria: "[H]ot damn, the girl's back in the driver's seat with Maria...This is vintage Siberry: scissor-kicking around the soul's messiest spots in search of anything hinting toward redemption... That's exactly what this album's about: the pull of life. Not specifically the good or the bad or the ugly but just the pull and the subsequent release"