Byte

The byte (/ˈbaɪt/) is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures. The size of the byte has historically been hardware dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. The de facto standard of eight bits is a convenient power of two permitting the values 0 through 255 for one byte. The international standard IEC 80000-13 codified this common meaning. Many types of applications use information representable in eight or fewer bits and processor designers optimize for this common usage. The popularity of major commercial computing architectures has aided in the ubiquitous acceptance of the 8-bit size.

The unit octet was defined to explicitly denote a sequence of 8 bits because of the ambiguity associated at the time with the byte. The usage of the term octad(e) for 8 bits is no longer common today.

Byte (dinghy)

The Byte is a small one-design sailing dinghy sailed by one person. It was designed by Canadian Ian Bruce, who also commissioned and marketed the Laser.

History

The Byte began as an inexpensive version of the Europe dinghy that could target sailors weighing between 45 kilograms and 65 kilograms (100 pounds to 145 pounds).

Design

The Byte is 12 ft (3.7 m) long, 4 ft 3 in (1.3 m) wide and roughly 100 lb (45 kg). The hull is composed of glass reinforced polyester and foam sandwich. The Byte is designed for sailors weighing 120 to 145 lb (54 to 66 kg) although most sailors weighing 90 to 160 lb (41 to 73 kg) should have no problems sailing this boat on a recreational basis. The Byte sail size is only 58 square feet (5.6 m²) making it the ideal boat for those sailors who enjoy the independence and simplicity of a cat rigged boat, such as the Laser, but who are not strong or heavy enough to control a large sail.

The rigging is similar to that of the Laser except one noticeable difference. The traveler is just below the main sheet block and not at the stern of the boat (similar to a Finn or Europe dinghy). This eradicates the chance of the main sheet getting caught on the transom which is a common complaint of the Laser. The sail controls are also "split" and led to both side-decks, again somewhat like a Finn or Europe and allows for more technical adjustments.

Byte (retailer)

Byte [Computer Superstores Ltd] was a retail venture of Specialist Computer Holdings Ltd in the United Kingdom which from 1993 sold primarily computer hardware, software and accessories in large stores on retail parks, (similar to PC World). The company was acquired by PC World in 1998 who re-branded or closed each store - leaving the Byte name to no longer exist.

In April 2012, a UK based Entrepreneur successfully applied for and was granted the Byte trademark. In January 2013 Byte [Technology Ltd] was incorporated with the intention of relaunching the Byte brand which by now had not been seen in the UK for over 15 years. Byte was officially relaunched as an on-line retailer (www.byte.co.uk) in January 2015 with a range of high quality Apple Certified accessories, and consumer electronics.

References

Noir

Noir (or noire) is the French word for black. It may also refer to:

Places

Noir: A Collection of Crime Comics

Noir: A Collection of Crime Comics is a black-and-white crime comics anthology published by Dark Horse Comics. The collection contains original stories as well as short stories of already established crime comics series.

Stories

"Stray Bullets: Open the Goddamn Box"

Writer and artist: David Lapham

Letterer: Clem Robins

"The Old Silo"

Writer and artist: Jeff Lemire

"Mister X: Yacht on the Styx"

Writer and artist: Dean Motter

"The Last Hit"

Writer: Chris Offutt

Penciller: Kano

Inker: Stefano Gaudiano

Letterer: Clem Robins

"Fracture"

Writer: Alex De Campi

Artist: Hugo Petrus

Letterer: Ryan Hill

"The Albanian"

Writer and artist: M. K. Perker

"Kane: The Card Player"

Writer and artist: Paul Grist

"Blood on My Hands"

Writer and artist: Rick Geary

"Trustworthy"

Prose story with illustrastions

Writer: Ken Lizzi

Artist: Joëlle Jones

"The New Me"

Writer: Gary D. Phillips

Artist: Eduardo Barreto

Letterer: Tom Orzechowski

"Lady's Choice"

Writers and artists: The Fillbach Brothers

"Criminal: 21st Century Noir"

Noir (fashion)

Noir is a Danish luxury fashion brand founded by designer Peter Ingwersen.

Introduction

Noir and the organic cotton brand Illuminati II were founded concurrently in 2005, and together with the diffusion line Bllack Noir, introduced in 2008, the three brands are owned by the holding company Noir Illuminati II Holding.

Noir’s design philosophy has its fulcrum in contrasts where shiny fabrics are set against matt textiles and stringent lines are combined with voluminous shapes. Inspiration is drawn from the dark side, literature such as Edgar Allan Poe and the Victorian era, mixed with sadomasochistic elements.

Objective

Peter Ingwersen’s founding vision behind Noir was to set up a luxury fashion apparel brand that in all links of the supply chain was based upon Corporate Social Responsibility principles. Inspired by the Zeitgeist – or ‘the spirit of the times’ – Ingwersen wanted Noir to be the first luxury clothing brand to incorporate social responsibility into the business model and blend organic and fair trade principles with mink, leather and similarly luxurious materials. The founding idea behind Noir was thus to create socially conscious fashion in an industry that is not otherwise known for its commitment to social responsibility. In other words: "We want to be known as the first brand to turn corporate social responsibility sexy”, says Peter Ingwersen.

Environment variable

Environment variables are a set of dynamic named values that can affect the way running processes will behave on a computer.

They are part of the environment in which a process runs. For example, a running process can query the value of the TEMP environment variable to discover a suitable location to store temporary files, or the HOME or USERPROFILE variable to find the directory structure owned by the user running the process.

They were introduced in their modern form in 1979 with Version 7 Unix, so are included in all Unix operating system flavors and variants from that point onward including Linux and OS X. From PC DOS 2.0 in 1982, all succeeding Microsoft operating systems including Microsoft Windows, and OS/2 also have included them as a feature, although with somewhat different syntax, usage and standard variable names.

Details

In all Unix and Unix-like systems, each process has its own separate set of environment variables. By default, when a process is created, it inherits a duplicate environment of its parent process, except for explicit changes made by the parent when it creates the child. At the API level, these changes must be done between running fork and exec. Alternatively, from command shells such as bash, a user can change environment variables for a particular command invocation by indirectly invoking it via env or using the ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE=VALUE <command> notation. All Unix operating system flavors, DOS, and Windows have environment variables; however, they do not all use the same variable names. A running program can access the values of environment variables for configuration purposes.