The Elder Scrolls

The Elder Scrolls is a series of action role-playing open world fantasy video games primarily developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. The series is known for its elaborate and richly detailed open worlds and its focus on free-form gameplay. Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim all won Game of the Year awards from multiple outlets. The series has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.

Development history

Before The Elder Scrolls

Prior to working on The Elder Scrolls series, Bethesda had worked predominantly with sports and action games. In the six years from its founding to Arena's 1994 release, Bethesda had released ten games, six of them sports games, with such titles as Hockey League Simulator, NCAA Basketball: Road to the Final Four ('91/'92 Edition), and Wayne Gretzky Hockey, and the remaining four adaptations from other media, primarily the Terminator series. Bethesda's course changed abruptly when it began its first action role-playing venture. Designer Ted Peterson recalls: "I remember talking to the guys at Sir-Tech who were doing Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant at the time, and them literally laughing at us for thinking we could do it." Ted Peterson worked alongside Vijay Lakshman as one of the initial designers of what was then simply Arena, a "medieval-style gladiator game."

Bourbon Restoration

The Bourbon Restoration was the period of French history following the fall of Napoleon in 1814 until the July Revolution of 1830. The brothers of executed King Louis XVI reigned in highly conservative fashion, and the exiles returned. They were nonetheless unable to reverse most of the changes made by the French Revolution and Napoleon. At the Congress of Vienna they were treated respectfully, but had to give up all the territorial gains made since 1789.

King Louis XVI of the House of Bourbon was overthrown and executed during the French Revolution (1789–1799), which in turn was followed by Napoleon as ruler of France. A coalition of European powers defeated Napoleon in the War of the Sixth Coalition, ended the First Empire in 1814, and restored the monarchy to the brothers of Louis XVI.

The Bourbon Restoration existed from (about) 6 April 1814 until the popular uprisings of the July Revolution of 1830. There was an interlude in spring 1815—the "Hundred Days"—when the return of Napoleon forced the Bourbons to flee France. When Napoleon was again defeated they returned to power in July.

Restoration (Spain)

The Restoration (Spanish: Restauración), or Bourbon Restoration (Restauración borbónica), is the name given to the period that began on 29 December 1874 — after a coup d'état by Martínez-Campos ended the First Spanish Republic and restored the monarchy under Alfonso XII — and ended on 14 April 1931 with the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic.

After almost a whole century of political instability and many civil wars, the aim of the Restoration was to create a new political system, which ensured stability by the practice of turnismo. This was the deliberate rotation of the Liberal and Conservative parties in the government, so no sector of the bourgeoisie felt isolated, while all other parties were excluded from the system. This was achieved by electoral fraud. Opposition to the system came from republicans, socialists, anarchists, Basque and Catalan nationalists, and Carlists.

Reign of Alfonso XII and the Regency of Maria Christina (1874–1898)

The pronunciamiento by Martinez Campos established Alfonso XII as king, marking the end of the First Spanish Republic. After this, the Constitution of 1876 was written and enforced during the whole restoration. This constitution established Spain as a constitutional monarchy with a bicameral legislature (Cortes Generales), consisting of an upper house (Senate), and a lower house (Congress of Deputies). This constitution gave the King the power to name Senators and to revoke laws if he wanted to, and he was also given the title of Commander-in-chief of the army.

Sleep (system call)

A computer program (process, task, or thread) may sleep, which places it into an inactive state for a period of time. Eventually the expiration of an interval timer, or the receipt of a signal or interrupt causes the program to resume execution.

Usage

A typical sleep system call takes a time value as a parameter, specifying the minimum amount of time that the process is to sleep before resuming execution. The parameter typically specifies seconds, although some operating systems provide finer resolution, such as milliseconds or microseconds.

Windows

On Windows, the Sleep() function takes a single parameter of the number of milliseconds to sleep. The Sleep() function is included in kernel32.dll, but no sleep command (executable) is natively available for scripts (batch files). It can be found in collections of Windows utilities like Windows 2003 Resource Kit.

Unix

On Unix-like operating systems, the sleep() function is called providing a single parameter of type unsigned integer of the number of seconds to sleep. (For more precise sleep times one can use the usleep() function.)

Sleep (OS X)

Sleep on Macintoshes running on OS X consist of the traditional sleep, Safe Sleep, and Power Nap. In System Preferences, Safe Sleep is referred to as sleep. Since Safe Sleep also allowed state to be restored in an event of a power outage, unlike other operating systems, hibernate was never offered as an option.

In 2005, some versions of Macs running Mac OS X v10.4 began to support Safe Sleep. The feature saves the contents of volatile memory to the system hard disk each time the Mac enters Sleep mode. The Mac can instantaneously wake from sleep mode if power to the RAM has not been lost. However, if the power supply was interrupted, such as when removing batteries without an AC power connection, the Mac would wake from Safe Sleep instead, restoring memory contents from the hard drive.

Safe Sleep capability is found in Mac models starting with the October 2005 revision of the PowerBook G4 (Double-Layer SD). Mac OS X v10.4 or higher is also required. A hack enabled the feature as well on older Macs running Mac OS X v10.4.

Sleep (non-human)

Sleep in non-human animals refers to a behavioral and physiological state characterized by altered consciousness, reduced responsiveness to external stimuli, and homeostatic regulation.

Sleep appears to be a requirement for all mammals and most other animals; rats kept from sleeping die within a couple of weeks.

Definition

Sleep can follow a physiological or behavioral definition. In the physiological sense, sleep is a state characterized by reversible unconsciousness, special brainwave patterns, sporadic eye movement, loss of muscle tone (possibly with some exceptions; see below regarding the sleep of birds and of aquatic mammals), and a compensatory increase following deprivation of the state. In the behavioral sense, sleep is characterized by non-responsiveness to external stimuli, the adoption of a typical posture, and the occupation of a sheltered site, all of which is usually repeated on a 24-hour basis. The physiological definition applies well to birds and mammals, but in other animals (whose brain is not as complex), the behavioral definition is more often used. In very simple animals, behavioral definitions of sleep are the only ones possible, and even then the behavioral repertoire of the animal may not be extensive enough to allow distinction between sleep and wakefulness.