Pop (U2 album)

Pop is the ninth studio album by Irish rock band U2. It was produced by Flood, Howie B, and Steve Osborne, and was released on 3 March 1997 on Island Records. The album was a continuation of the band's 1990s musical reinvention, as they incorporated alternative rock, techno, dance, and electronica influences into their sound. Pop employed a variety of production techniques that were relatively new to U2, including sampling, loops, programmed drum machines, and sequencing.

Recording sessions began in 1995 with various record producers, including Nellee Hooper, Flood, Howie B, and Osborne, who were introducing the band to various electronica influences. At the time, drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. was inactive due to a back injury, prompting the other band members to take different approaches to songwriting. Upon Mullen's return, the band began re-working much of their material but ultimately struggled to complete songs. After the band allowed manager Paul McGuinness to book their upcoming 1997 PopMart Tour before the record was completed, they felt rushed into delivering it. Even after delaying the album's release date from the 1996 Christmas and holiday season to March 1997, U2 ran out of time in the studio, working up to the last minute to complete songs.

Pop music

Pop music (a term that derives from "popular") is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the Western world during the 1950s and 1960s, deriving from rock and roll. The terms "popular music" and "pop music" are often used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular (and can include any style).

Pop music is eclectic, and often borrows elements from other styles such as urban, dance, rock, Latin, and country; nonetheless, there are core elements that define pop music. Identifying factors include generally short to medium-length songs written in a basic format (often the verse-chorus structure) as well as the common employment of repeated choruses, melodic tunes, and hooks.

Definitions

David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop music as "a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz, and folk musics". According to Pete Seeger, pop music is "professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music". Although pop music is seen as just the singles charts, it is not the sum of all chart music. The music charts contain songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs. Pop music, as a genre, is seen as existing and developing separately. Thus "pop music" may be used to describe a distinct genre, aimed at a youth market, often characterized as a softer alternative to rock and roll.

Happy Tree Friends

Happy Tree Friends (HTF) is an American flash cartoon created and developed by Aubrey Ankrum, Rhode Montijo, Kenn Navarro and Warren Graff for Mondo Media. The show is cited as an early example of a popular Internet phenomenon achieving a cult following.

The action and adventure comedy is composed of simple drawings and juxtaposes cute forest animals with extreme graphic violence. Each episode revolves around the characters enduring accidental events of bloodshed, pain, dismemberment, and/or death. At one point, the warning "Cartoon Violence: Not recommended for small children, or big babies" was given on the official website.

The episodes last from 1 to 7 minutes. In 2006, a television series featuring longer episodes aired. A spin-off called Ka-Pow! premiered on September 2, 2008.

Characters

Happy Tree Friends features a variety of characters, each with varying appearances and personalities. However, almost all share identical Pac-Man eyes, buckteeth, and pink heart-shaped noses. Lumpy makes up one of the four primary characters along with Cuddles, Giggles and Toothy.

PoweredUSB

PoweredUSB, also known as Retail USB, USB PlusPower, and USB +Power, is an addition to the Universal Serial Bus standard that allows for higher-power devices to obtain power through their USB host instead of requiring an independent power supply or external AC adapter. It is mostly used in point-of-sale equipment, such as receipt printers and barcode readers.

History

PoweredUSB, as a proprietary variant of USB, was developed and proposed by IBM, Berg (now FCI), NCR and Microsoft between 1998 and 1999, with the last revision (0.8g) issued in 2004. The specification is not endorsed by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF). IBM, who owns patents to PoweredUSB, charges a licensing fee for its use.

PoweredUSB was licensed by Hewlett-Packard, Cyberdata, Fujitsu, Wincor and others.

Implementation

PoweredUSB uses a more complex connector than standard USB, maintaining the standard USB 1.x/2.0 interface for data communications and adding a second connector for power. Physically, it is essentially two connectors stacked such that the bottom connector accepts a standard USB plug and the top connector takes a power plug.

IBM Power (software)

POWER was an IBM operating system enhancement package that provided spooling facilities for the IBM System/360 running DOS/360 or retrofitted with modified DOS/360. Upgrades, POWER/VS and POWER/VSE were available for and the IBM System/370 running DOS/VS and DOS/VSE respectively. POWER is an acronym for Priority Output Writers, Execution processors and input Readers.

The product

POWER was an operating system enhancement available for DOS/360, DOS/VS, and DOS/VSE, and came packaged with some third party DOS-based operating systems. International Business Machines released POWER in 1969 following a public introduction at the IBM Wall Street Data Center.

It 'spooled' (queued) printer and card data, freeing programs from being dependent upon the speed of printers or punched card equipment.

POWER competed with non-IBM products, namely DataCorp's The Spooler and SDI's GRASP. Unlike the other products, POWER required a dedicated partition.

It allowed a single printer (1403/2311), punch (2520, 2540) or reader (2540, 2501) to be shared by two or more processing partitions. Input data was asynchronously loaded and directed to the proper partition by Job class. Output was directed to disk and stored there - then directed to a printer or punch by the writer type, (PRT, PUN), Job Class, Priority and form code. This was provided in PRT and PUN control cards in the input stream. Once the operator put the proper form in the printer/punch and told power to start (G PUN or G PRT on the console) the device would continue until no more output of that type was available. When a new form was encountered it would alert the operator to change forms and wait for the next go command.

Hydroelectric power in Himachal Pradesh

Himachal Pradesh is extremely rich in its hydroelectricity resources. The state is having about twenty five percent of the national potential in this aspect. It has been estimated that about 27,436 MW of hydel power can be generated in the state by the construction of various hydel projects on the five perennial river basins no matter they are major, medium or small. Out of total hydel potential of the state, 3934.74MW is harnessed so far, out of which only 7.6% is under the control of Himachal Pradesh Government while the rest being exploited by the Central Government. The state government has been giving the highest priority for its development, since hydel generation can meet the growing need of power for industry, agriculture and rural electrification. It is also the biggest source of income to the state as it provides electricity to the other states also.

Himachal has enough resources to generate surplus power but, sometimes this is a misconception as in winters the power shortage overshoots ten lakh units per day due to less flow of water in rivers and at the same time increase in lighting and heating load. Due to increased industrialization and rural electrification this figure is expected to rise even further.