Machine

A machine is a tool containing one or more parts that uses energy to perform an intended action. Machines are usually powered by mechanical, chemical, thermal, or electrical means, and are often motorized. Historically, a power tool also required moving parts to classify as a machine. However, the advent of electronics has led to the development of power tools without moving parts that are considered machines.

A simple machine is a device that simply transforms the direction or magnitude of a force, but a large number of more complex machines exist. Examples include vehicles, electronic systems, molecular machines, computers, television, and radio.

Etymology

The word machine derives from the Latin word machina, which in turn derives from the Greek (Doric μαχανά makhana, Ionic μηχανή mekhane "contrivance, machine, engine", a derivation from μῆχος mekhos "means, expedient, remedy").

A wider meaning of "fabric, structure" is found in classical Latin, but not in Greek usage.

This meaning is found in late medieval French, and is adopted from the French into English in the mid-16th century.

Artension

Artension was a North American neo-classical progressive metal band, founded in 1993 by keyboardist Vitalij Kuprij.

History

It was sometime in '92/'93, when Vitalij Kuprij, who was studying classical music in Switzerland at that time, met Roger Staffelbach, a Swiss guitarist who was also studying at the Jazz School in Lucerne.

They soon founded their band "Atlantis Rising", which played several instrumental gigs in Switzerland. After having recorded some demos, they got in touch with Mike Varney of Shrapnel Records, who showed great interest in the band but suggested to add some vocal lines to their songs.

Vitalij had already known stunning drummer Mike Terrana from one of Yngwie Malmsteen's tours. His friend, bassist Kevin Chown, also joined the band and enriched their sound with solid experience and great musicianship, and Artension was born.

Mike Varney introduced Vitalij and Roger to several musicians, one of them being John West, whose soaring vocals, along with Vitalij's and Roger's lightning-fast solos, became the trademark for Artension's neo-classical and aggressive music.

Machine (Static-X album)

Machine is the second studio album from the American industrial metal band Static-X, released on May 22, 2001 and recorded at Studio 508 (Los Angeles, California). When compared to the band's other albums, Machine features more electronics and industrial effects, and more screamed vocals from Wayne Static.

Album information

The song "Black and White" provided the album's first single and music video, and later a second single would be found in "This Is Not". The song "Cold" also had a video made for it, and tied in with the film Queen of the Damned. It was featured on the aforementioned film's soundtrack album, as was the exclusive "Not Meant for Me", performed by Wayne Static. The song "Anything but This", a bonus track from the Japanese version, is also found on the Resident Evil soundtrack.

Reception

Critical reaction to the album was mixed, the most positive reviews came from Rolling stone NME and Drowned in Sound. Terry Bezer of Drowning Sound in his review stated, "It is impossible to put into words just how much Static X have progressed since their last effort. True enough, it’s not the most original of sounds (think Ministry crossed with Slipknot) but it does have all the enthusiasm of a bull charging for El Matador’s red cloth and twice the power." Fan reaction was mostly positive as well. Despite the mixed reviews, Machine sold around 500,000 copies in the USA, making it the band's second most successful album (after Wisconsin Death Trip). It is often regarded as the band's heaviest studio album.

Maia

Maia /ˈmaɪ.ə/ may refer to:

Mythology

Literature, fiction and entertainment

Maia (Ribeira Grande)

Maia is a civil parish in the municipality of Ribeira Grande in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores. The population in 2011 was 1,900, in an area of 21.97 km². Maia is the largest parish by area in Ribeira Grande.

History

The first Azorean historians referred to this parish, owing to the settlement of Inês da Maia, a noblewoman that established a home here in the 15th Century.

The settlement of the community dates back to the early settlement of Ribeira Grande; the construction of the main church was begun at the end of the 15th Century. By 1522, it had its third vicar. Maia became one of the northern coasts more rapidly growing places: one hundred years after its foundation it had become a civil parish. Its fertile terrains, one of the more productive on the island of São Miguel, and its port access, meant that small industry developed easily in this area. In particular, the tobacco, tea and cement industries developed over the course of the next centuries. Maia was also the location and headquarters for one of the first passenger transport companies on the island.

Maia (novel)

Maia is a fantasy novel by Richard Adams, published in 1984.

Plot introduction

Maia is set in the Beklan Empire, the same fantasy world as Adams's 1974 novel Shardik. Although published ten years after Shardik, Maia is a loose prequel whose events take place about a dozen years earlier. A few characters appear in both books.

Maia is a beautiful teenage peasant girl who is sold into slavery. Amidst colourful, boldly drawn characters, she is drawn (sometimes unwillingly or even unknowingly) into many adventures and machinations: ritual dances, flooding rivers, espionage, politics, and war. Some scenes, particularly during Maia's enslavement, include moderately explicit sexual and sado-masochistic elements. Nevertheless, she survives the decadence and danger with an impulsive, innocent sense of courage and enterprise. Maia ends with the sort of quotidian, pastoral, familial scene (in Maia's memory and expectation of returning home) which commonly rewards the positive characters in Adams's works.

Trimming (computer programming)

In computer programming, trimming (trim) or stripping (strip) is a string manipulation in which leading and trailing whitespace is removed from a string.

For example, the string (enclosed by apostrophes)

would be changed, after trimming, to

Variants

Definition of whitespace

The characters which are considered whitespace varies between programming languages and implementations. For example, C traditionally only counts space, tab, line feed, and carriage return characters, while languages which support Unicode typically include all Unicode space characters. Some implementations also include ASCII control codes (non-printing characters) along with whitespace characters.

Java's trim method considers ASCII spaces and control codes as whitespace, contrasting with the Java isWhitespace() method, which recognizes all Unicode space characters.

Delphi's Trim function considers characters U+0000 (NULL) through U+0020 (SPACE) to be whitespace.

Usage

Following are examples of trimming a string using several programming languages. All of the implementations shown return a new string and do not alter the original variable.