S&T (company)

The S&T group of enterprises is an IT consulting, solutions and services provider with its head office in Vienna and 80 branches in 22 countries.

Company history

S&T was founded by Thomas Streimelweger and Karl Tantscher in 1993. The company started up in Slovakia, Bulgaria and Ukraine and other branches were established over the next few years in Romania, Moldova and Yugoslavia. In the early years, S&T specialized in the sale of IT hardware and software, as a Full Function Distributor for Hewlett Packard but they turned their focus to IT consulting and services from the year 2000.

S&T’s initial public offering took place on the EASDAQ (now NASDAQ Europe) in 1998. Following on from this, the company grew by setting up branches and through the acquisition of other companies. In 1999, for example, S&T expanded its presence into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia by purchasing Hermes Plus. Not long afterwards, the branch in Slovenia was strengthened by the takeover of e-business company ICOS. S&T also set up a branch in Hungary that same year.

Söğüt

Söğüt [søʲyt] is a town and district of Bilecik Province in the Marmara region of Turkey. Söğüt has an area of 599 km² (231 sq mi) and borders Bilecik to the west, Gölpazarı to the north, İnhisar to the northeast, Eskişehir to the southeast, and Bozüyük to the southwest. The 2000 census put the population at 21,012 citizens, and according to a 2010 estimate, the population was 19,425. Söğüt has 5 boroughs and 23 villages. Two of these villages, Çaltı and Küre, have a municipality. Söğüt is 31 km away from Bilecik and 52 km away from Eskişehir. It depends economically on Eskişehir. The mayor is Osman Güneş (AKP). Historically it was the first capital of the Ottoman Empire from its formation in 1299 to 1335.

History

Söğüt was a Seljuk Turkish tribe in western Anatolia that later gave birth to the Ottoman Empire. It was a small but sophisticated tribe that extended from the Kayi branch of the Seljuk Turks that in the 12th and 13th centuries invaded Anatolia. The village of Söğüt was surrounded by three greater Turkish tribes; Eskenderum in the north, Eskişehir in the east, Konyali in the south; and with the Byzantine Empire in the west. Legend has it that the bey (chief) of the tribe in the late 13th century, Ertuğrul, bravely kept the enemies at bay so that his son, Osman, could conquer them all during his reign, 1299 to 1324. When Osman's son, Orhan, came to power after his father's death he renamed the tribe Osmanli in honour of his father. The village of Söğüt (formerly Thebasion until 1231) later grew into a town that served the Osmanli tribe as capital until the capture of the Byzantine city of Prusa in 1325 when the capital was moved to the far more luxurious palaces of the Byzantines.

Sōtō

Sōtō Zen or the Sōtō school (曹洞宗, Sōtō-shū) is the largest of the three traditional sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism (the others being Rinzai and Ōbaku). It is the Japanese line of the Chinese Caodong school, which was founded during the Tang Dynasty by Dongshan Liangjie. It emphasizes Shikantaza, meditation with no objects, anchors, or content. The meditator strives to be aware of the stream of thoughts, allowing them to arise and pass away without interference.

The Japanese brand of the sect was imported in the 13th century by Dōgen Zenji, who studied Caodong Buddhism (Chinese: 曹洞宗; pinyin: Cáodòng Zōng) abroad in China. Dōgen is remembered today as the co-patriarch of Sōtō Zen in Japan along with Keizan Jōkin.

With about 14,000 temples, Sōtō is one of the largest Japanese Buddhist organizations. Sōtō Zen is now also popular in the West, and in 1996 priests of the Sōtō Zen tradition formed the Soto Zen Buddhist Association based in North America.

History

Chinese origins

The original Chinese version of Soto-shu, i.e. the Caodong-school (曹洞宗) was established by the Tang dynasty monk Dongshan Liangjie (Ja: Tōzan Ryōkai) in the 9th century.

Shit

Shit is an English word that is usually considered vulgar and profane in Modern English. As a noun it refers to fecal matter, and as a verb it means to defecate; in the plural ("the shits") it means diarrhea. Shite is also a common variant in British English and Irish English. As a slang term, it has many meanings, including: nonsense, foolishness, something of little value or quality, trivial and usually boastful or inaccurate talk, or a contemptible person. It may also be used as an expression of annoyance, surprise, or anger.

Etymology

The word is likely derived from Old English, having the nouns scite (dung, attested only in place names) and scitte (diarrhoea), and the verb scītan (to defecate, attested only in bescītan, to cover with excrement); eventually it morphed into Middle English schītte (excrement), schyt (diarrhoea) and shiten (to defecate), and it is virtually certain that it was used in some form by preliterate Germanic tribes at the time of the Roman Empire. The word may be further traced to Proto-Germanic *skit-, and ultimately to Proto-Indo-European *skheid- "cut, separate", the same root believed to have become the word shed. The word has several cognates in modern Germanic languages, such as German Scheiße, Dutch schijt, Swedish skit, Icelandic skítur, Norwegian skitt etc. Ancient Greek had 'skōr' (gen. 'skatos' hence 'scato-'), from Proto-Indo-European *sker-, which is likely unrelated.