Zip bomb

A zip bomb, also known as a zip of death or decompression bomb, is a malicious archive file designed to crash or render useless the program or system reading it. It is often employed to disable antivirus software, in order to create an opening for more traditional viruses.

Rather than hijacking the normal operation of the program, a zip bomb allows the program to work as intended, but the archive is carefully crafted so that unpacking it (e.g. by a virus scanner in order to scan for viruses) requires inordinate amounts of time, disk space or memory.

Most modern antivirus programs can detect whether a file is a zip bomb, to avoid unpacking it.

Details and use

A zip bomb is usually a small file for ease of transport and to avoid suspicion. However, when the file is unpacked, its contents are more than the system can handle. The technique was used on dialup bulletin board systems in the past.

Another example of a zip bomb is the file 42.zip, which is a zip file consisting of 42 kilobytes of compressed data, containing five layers of nested zip files in sets of 16, each bottom layer archive containing a 4.3-gigabyte (4 294 967 295 bytes; ~ 3.99 GiB) file for a total of 4.5 petabytes (4 503 599 626 321 920 bytes; ~ 3.99 PiB) of uncompressed data. This file is still available for download on various websites across the Internet. In many anti-virus scanners, only a few layers of recursion are performed on archives to help prevent attacks that would cause a buffer overflow, an out-of-memory condition, or exceed an acceptable amount of program execution time. Zip bombs often (if not always) rely on repetition of identical files to achieve their extreme compression ratios. Dynamic programming methods can be employed to limit traversal of such files, so that only one file is followed recursively at each level, effectively converting their exponential growth to linear.

Character design of Final Fantasy

Although each installment of the Final Fantasy series is generally set in a different fictional world with separate storylines, there are several commonalities when it comes to character design, as certain design themes repeat themselves, as well as specific character names and classes. Within the main series, Yoshitaka Amano was the character designer for Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI, Tetsuya Nomura was the character designer for Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIII, Yoshitaka Amano created and did the concept art for the characters while Toshiyuki Itahana was the final character designer for Final Fantasy IX, and Akihiko Yoshida was the character designer for Final Fantasy XII.

Visual character design

The series has often featured male characters with slightly effeminate characteristics, as well as female characters with slightly tomboyish, but still feminine, characteristics. This trend has generally increased as the series evolved. These characters are usually teenagers, which some critics have interpreted as an effort on the part of the designers to ensure the players identify with them. At the same time, some female characters have been increasingly designed to wear very revealing outfits. Square Enix has stated that a more rugged looking hero had been considered for Final Fantasy XII but had ultimately been scrapped in favor of Vaan, another effeminate protagonist. The developers cited scenaristic reasons and target demographic considerations to explain their choice. For Final Fantasy XIII, Square Enix settled on a female main character, described as a "female version of Cloud from FFVII." This aspect of Final Fantasy can also be seen in Sora, the protagonist of Kingdom Hearts, a crossover series featuring Final Fantasy and Disney characters.

F.A.M.E. (album)

F.A.M.E. is the fourth studio album by American recording artist Chris Brown. It was first released on March 18, 2011, by Jive Records. The album serves as the follow-up to his third album Graffiti (2009). The album also marks as his last album with Jive Records. On this album, Brown worked with several record producers and songwriters; including Kevin McCall, Jean-Baptiste, Brian Kennedy, DJ Frank E, The Underdogs and The Messengers, among others. The album features guest appearances, from Wiz Khalifa, Game, Timbaland and Big Sean, among others.

Musically, F.A.M.E. combines the musical genres of R&B, pop, hip hop and Europop. Upon its release, the album received mixed reviews from most music critics, who were ambivalent towards its songwriting and material. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, with first-week sales of 270,000, Brown's first number-one album in the United States. It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for selling more than 500,000 copies. The album garnered three Grammy Award nominations at the 54th annual ceremony, eventually winning Best R&B Album. F.A.M.E. also won the Album of the Year at the 2011 Soul Train Music Awards.

Box office bomb

In the motion picture industry, a "box office bomb" or "box office flop" is a film that is viewed as highly unsuccessful or unprofitable during its theatrical run, sometimes preceding hype regarding its cost, production, or marketing efforts. Generally, any film for which the production and marketing costs exceed the combined revenue recovered after release is considered to have "bombed".

Gauging the financial success of a film is difficult, and because there is no reliable definition, what makes a "box-office bomb" can be very subjective. Not all films that fail to earn back their estimated costs during their theatrical runs are "bombs," and the label is generally applied to films that miss earnings projections by a wide margin, particularly when they are very expensive to produce, and sometimes in conjunction with middling or poor reviews (though critical reception has an imperfect connection to box office performance).

Causes of a film's failure

Negative word of mouth

Beginning in the 1980s, cinemas started to drop movies that suffered a poor opening weekend. This made the performance of a film on its opening weekend much more crucial to its perception. With the growth of the Internet during the 1990s, chat rooms and websites enabled negative word of mouth to spread rapidly.

Zip

Zip, Zips or ZIP may refer to:

Computing

Arts and entertainment

List of recurring Tomb Raider characters

This is a list of recurring characters that appear through the game series, Tomb Raider.

Winston Smith

Lara's butler who is often seen at Croft Manor. He rarely plays any role in the game's plot, usually only seen in Lara's Mansion, in the 2nd and 3rd games he follows Lara around the mansion, carrying a tray with what seems to be blue mugs on it and often farts and groans. One of the secrets in the 2nd and 3rd game was the ability to lock Winston in a large freezer.

In Tomb Raider Chronicles, he sits around a table with various other friends of Lara as they recall Lara's past adventures. He tells the story of how Lara finds the Philosopher's Stone in Rome, while being stalked by Larson Conway and Pierre Dupont. He also tells how Lara stole the "Iris" artefact from Von Croy's company building.

In Tomb Raider: Legend he stands beside the fireplace in Croft Manor and offers advice to Lara in cutscenes. He also appears in the manor level of Tomb Raider: Anniversary.

Tom Prichard

Thomas "Dr. Tom" Prichard (born August 18, 1959) is an American professional wrestler and author. He is the brother of Chris and Bruce Prichard.

Career

Beginnings

Tom Prichard began his career in Los Angeles, around 1979, working for Gene and Mike LeBell's Los Angeles Olympic Auditorium wrestling promotion, where he held several championships in that organization, including the Americas tag team title with Chris Adams. After LeBell closed the L.A. promotion down in 1982, Prichard competed in various NWA territories for the next four years before settling in the southeast, where he had his greatest success of his career.

Continental Wrestling Federation and United States Wrestling Association

Prichard joined the Continental Wrestling Federation in the late 1980s, and feuded with "The Dirty White Boy" Tony Anthony. Their feud included a very controversial angle, which aired on April 23, 1988, where Anthony's valet came out with a black eye and begged Prichard to help her, only for Anthony to attack him from behind, cuff his hands behind his back, and hang him. On October 3, 1988 in Birmingham, Alabama, he defeated Anthony in the finals of a tournament to win the vacant CWF Heavyweight Championship. Prichard lost the title to Wendell Cooley on April 7, 1989 in Knoxville, Tennessee, but regained the belt on June 23 of that year. He lost the title to Dennis Condrey a month later on July 22 in Dothan, Alabama, before once again regaining it after defeating Condrey on December 6 of that same year. Prichard held the title until the CWF closed later that month.