Pilot ACE

The Pilot ACE was one of the first computers built in the United Kingdom at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the early 1950s.

History

Pilot ACE was a preliminary version of the full ACE, which had been designed by Alan Turing. After Turing left NPL (in part because he was disillusioned by the lack of progress on building the ACE), James H. Wilkinson took over the project and Harry Huskey helped with the design. The Pilot ACE ran its first program on May 10, 1950, and was demonstrated to the press in December 1950.

Although originally intended as a prototype, it became clear that the machine was a potentially useful resource, especially given the lack of other computing devices at the time. After some upgrades to make operational use practical, it went into service in late 1951, and saw considerable operational service over the next several years. One reason the ACE was useful is that it was able to perform floating point arithmetic necessary for scientific calculations. Wilkinson tells the story of how this came to be. The pilot ACE was built without hardware for multiplication or long division, in contrast to other computers at that time. The ACE started out using fixed-point multiplication and division implemented as software. It soon became apparent that fixed point arithmetic was a bad idea because the numbers quickly went out of range. It only took a short time to write new software so that the ACE could do floating-point arithmetic. After that, James H. Wilkinson became an expert and wrote a book on rounding errors in floating-point calculations, which eventually became a big seller.

Ace (Ian Van Dahl album)

Ace is the debut studio album by the Belgian dance music act known as Ian Van Dahl, released in 2002. The album contains four songs that reached the top 20 of the UK singles chart: "Will I?" (#5); "Reason" (#8); "Try" (#15); and their biggest hit single, "Castles in the Sky", which reached #3 and spent seven weeks in the top 10 in the summer of 2001. This last song also reached the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the U.S., where it peaked at #91. The album itself peaked at #7 in the UK, where it achieved Gold status after only four weeks. The album title was inspired by taking the first letters of the names of each member of the act; Annemie, Christophe and Eric.

Track listings

Tide (brand)

Tide (Alo, Vizir or Ace in some countries) is the brand-name of a laundry detergent manufactured by Procter & Gamble, first introduced in 1946.

Background

The household chore of doing the laundry began to change with the introduction of washing powders in the 1880s. These new laundry products originally were simply pulverized soap. New cleaning-product marketing successes, such as the 1890s introduction of the N. K. Fairbank Company's Gold Dust Washing Powder (which used a breakthrough hydrogenation process in its formulation), and Hudson's heavily advertised product, Rinso, proved that there was a ready market for better cleaning agents. Henkel & Cie's "self-activating" (or self bleaching) cleaner, Persil; (introduced in 1907); the early synthetic detergent, BASF's Fewa (introduced in 1932); and Procter & Gamble's 1933 totally synthetic creation, Dreft, (marketed for use on infant-wear)—all indicated significant advances in the laundry cleaning product market.

The detergent business was further revolutionized with the discovery of the alkylbenzene sulfonates, which, when combined with the use of chemical "builders", made machine washing with hard water possible. This presented Procter and Gamble with the opportunity to create a product such as Tide.

Flying ace

A flying ace or fighter ace is a military aviator credited with shooting down several enemy aircraft during aerial combat. The actual number of aerial victories required to officially qualify as an "ace" has varied, but is usually considered to be five or more. The few aces among combat aviators have historically accounted for the majority of air-to-air victories in military history.Erich Hartmann is the ace of aces, the highest scoring ace of all time with a total of 352 confirmed victories.

History

World War I

World War I introduced the systematic use of true single-seat fighter aircraft, with enough speed and agility to catch and maintain contact with targets in the air, coupled with armament sufficiently powerful to destroy the targets. Aerial combat became a prominent feature with the Fokker Scourge, in the last half of 1915. This was also the beginning of a long-standing trend in warfare, showing statistically that approximately five percent of combat pilots account for the majority of air-to-air victories.

Pilot (About a Boy)

"Pilot" is the pilot and first episode of the American television comedy series About a Boy, which premiered on February 22, 2014 on NBC in the United States. The series is based on the 1998 novel of the same name by British writer Nick Hornby and the 2002 film starring Hugh Grant. The episode is written by series developer Jason Katims and is directed by Jon Favreau. In the episode, a young boy named Marcus (Benjamin Stockham) and his single mother Fiona (Minnie Driver) move in next door to Will (David Walton), an unemployed bachelor living in San Francisco. Will woos a woman by pretending Marcus is his son.

Plot

Will is on a San Francisco trolley with his friend Andy (Al Madrigal) and Andy's two kids. Will gets off to flirt with a woman named Dakota (Leslie Bibb) who is going to a single parents' support group meeting. He lies to her, saying he is a single parent of a son named Jonah who has leukemia. She becomes attracted to him and asks to set up a play date between her daughters and his son.

8 Simple Rules (season 1)

The first season of 8 Simple Rules aired on ABC between September 17, 2002 and May 20, 2003, it consists of 28 episodes. On August 7, 2007 Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released the complete first season on DVD for the first time ever, on a 3-disc set.

Guest stars throughout season one include: Cybill Shepherd, Jason Priestley, Terry Bradshaw, Nick Carter, Shelley Long, Patrick Warburton, Thad Luckinbill, Billy Aaron Brown and Larry Miller.

Cast and characters

Main cast

Guest cast

Alcatraz (TV series)

Alcatraz is an American television series created by Elizabeth Sarnoff, Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt, and produced by J. J. Abrams and Bad Robot Productions. The series premiered on Fox on January 16, 2012, as a mid-season replacement. Switching between eras, the series focuses on the Alcatraz prison, which was shut down in 1963 due to unsafe conditions for its prisoners and guards. The show's premise is that both the prisoners and the guards disappeared in 1963 and have abruptly reappeared in modern-day San Francisco, where they are being tracked down by a government agency. The series starred Sarah Jones, Jorge Garcia, Sam Neill, and Parminder Nagra.

The show was canceled by Fox on May 9, 2012.

Plot summary