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Postcondition

In computer programming, a postcondition is a condition or predicate that must always be true just after the execution of some section of code or after an operation in a formal specification. Postconditions are sometimes tested using assertions within the code itself. Often, postconditions are simply included in the documentation of the affected section of code.

For example: The result of a factorial is always an integer and greater than or equal to 1. So a program that calculates the factorial of an input number would have postconditions that the result after the calculation be an integer and that it be greater than or equal to 1. Another example: a program that calculates the square root of an input number might have the postconditions that the result be a number and that its square be equal to the input.

Postconditions in object-oriented programming
In some software design approaches, postconditions, along with preconditions and class invariants, are components of the software construction method design by contract.

The postcondition for any routine is a declaration of the properties which are guaranteed upon completion of the routine's execution. As it relates to the routine's contract, the postcondition offers assurance to potential callers that in cases in which the routine is called in a state in which its precondition holds, the properties declared by the postcondition are assured.

Eiffel example
The following example written in Eiffel sets the value of a class attribute  based on a caller-provided argument. The postcondition follows the keyword. In this example, the postcondition guarantees, in cases in which the precondition holds (i.e., when  represents a valid hour of the day), that after the execution of , the class attribute   will have the same value as. The tag " " describes this postcondition clause and serves to identify it in case of a runtime postcondition violation.

Postconditions and inheritance
In the presence of inheritance, the routines inherited by descendant classes (subclasses) do so with their contracts, that is their preconditions and postconditions, in force. This means that any implementations or redefinitions of inherited routines also have to be written to comply with their inherited contracts. Postconditions can be modified in redefined routines, but they may only be strengthened. That is, the redefined routine may increase the benefits it provides to the client, but may not decrease those benefits.

title: Postcondition


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Time Crisis (video game)

Time Crisis is a light gun shooter arcade game, developed and released by Namco in 1995, and the first title to be released in the series of the same name. The game differentiated itself from other light gun shooters of the time by incorporating a pedal that controls when the player character takes cover to reload and avoid enemy fire. Players have a limited amount of time to clear each section by defeating enemies. The game's story focuses on Richard Miller, a secret agent, who is sent to rescue a kidnapped woman from a ruthless tyrant seeking to reclaim control of their former country from a new regime.

A port of the game for the PlayStation was released in 1997, as part of a bundle coinciding with the launch of the Guncon light gun controller, and featured an add-on pack of additional stages that are set after the main story. Both the arcade original and the console version were well-received by critics, in particular the gameplay mechanics. The game proved a commercial success and spawned a sequel, Time Crisis II, in 1998, and a spin-off title, Time Crisis: Project Titan, in 2001.

Gameplay
Time Crisis is a three-dimensional first-person rail shooter similar to Virtua Cop, in that the player holds a light gun and fires at on-screen enemies. However, it differs from such video games by use of its cover system - a gameplay mechanic in which players can duck behind cover to avoid enemy fire and reload their weapons. In the arcade version, a foot pedal is used to toggle between ducking and attacking positions; in console conversions, a button command replicates the foot pedal's functions. The PlayStation version also allows players to use the pedal from a racing wheel peripheral, or even by pressing a button on a controller plugged into port 2 by hand; some players fashioned home-made pedals that, when stepped on, pressed down a button on the second controller on the floor instead.

The game consists of three stages, each consisting of three areas and a boss battle. Each area consist of a series of firearms battles, in which players must defeat a set group of enemies in order to advance to the next battle. Each area features a one minute time limit to begin with, which counts down during battles and transitions between each, and is only extended by clearing a current battle; defeating certain optional enemies also gives a few extra seconds. To avoid running down the clock, the player must take risks, shooting enemies rapidly and hiding only when necessary. Each playthrough sees the player given a set number of lives, in which one is deducted when the player is hit by an enemy, or fails to avoid being hit by a hazard in the current battle, with the game being over when the player runs out of lives or time.

The arcade cabinet's light gun (introduced in Point Blank) utilizes a special memory chip to synchronize areas of the screen's image as the player rotates the gun around. The light gun also features a blowback function which simulates real-life gun recoil, this feature isn't retained in the PlayStation port. The PlayStation port can be played either with the GunCon light gun peripheral or by using a controller to aim a cursor around the screen. The port features an exclusive Special mode, in which the player's performance, such as how quickly they can clear an area, affects the path they take through the game, resulting in multiple possibilities and endings.

Plot
In 1995, the V.S.S.E., an international protection agency, helps Sercian opposition leader William MacPherson engineer a coup that overthrows a century-old authoritarian regime. MacPherson is elected as the Sercian republic's first president. Sherudo Garo, the last survivor of the regime, plots to restore the old order, launching a series of attacks and assassinations that destabilize the nation. As the finishing touch, Sherudo has MacPherson's daughter Rachel abducted and imprisoned in his family's castle on a remote island, demanding vital military secrets in exchange for her life. A desperate MacPherson contacts the V.S.S.E., who in turn dispatches veteran agent Richard Miller, the "One Man Army", to infiltrate the castle and rescue Rachel.

Miller reaches the island and rams his explosives-rigged boat into the castle's exterior to create an entrance. Sherudo hears the resulting boom, but his head of security, Wild Dog, assures him that Miller will not last long against his highly trained mercenaries. Meanwhile, Miller confronts Wild Dog's troops in the submarine hangar and makes his way to the main courtyard against heavy resistance, eventually reaching Rachel's location. She warns him of a setup before being whisked away. Miller is confronted by Sherudo's chief assassin, Moz, and his unit. He defeats them and interrogates Moz, who reveals that Rachel has been transferred to the clock tower. There, Miller is attacked by Sherudo, a trained knife thrower, and guns him down, only to find Rachel held at gunpoint by Wild Dog. Angered by Sherudo's death, Wild Dog reveals his intentions to blow up the castle with Richard inside and escape with Rachel. Pursuing them to the castle's helipad, Miller arrives just as Rachel manages to break free, leading Wild Dog to shoot her. A furious Miller engages Wild Dog in a fast-and-loose gun battle across the rooftop, during which Wild Dog accidentally sets off his detonator, apparently killing himself in a fiery explosion. Richard collects the wounded Rachel and escapes in Wild Dog's chopper just as the rest of the castle goes up in flames.

The PlayStation version features a special mission known as the "Kantaris Deal", which takes place several weeks after the main story's events. Miller is alerted by V.S.S.E. to the presence of an illegal arms factory posing as a Sercian hotel, with ties to Wild Dog's organization. He is assigned to infiltrate the factory and eliminate its owner, Kantaris. Upon clearing the lobby, Miller has three different paths to his target. The first takes him through the ballroom/casino, where he eliminates Kantaris's boomerang-flinging assassin, Web Spinner. He then pursues her to the swimming pool just as she attempts to escape by air. After shooting down an escort gunship, Miller damages the engines of Kantaris's ship just as it takes off, causing it to crash and explode. Should Miller fail to stop Web Spinner in time, he will instead be taken to the arms factory; and should Miller fail to pursue Kantaris in time, he will instead be taken to Kantaris' office in the lounge. The second path, which can only be accessed if there are less than 22 seconds left on the clock, instead goes through the shopping mall and down into a garbage disposal. There, Miller uses a claw arm to punch a hole in the wall, allowing him to access the underground arms factory. From there, he makes his way to Kantaris' office in the lounge and defeats her personal security droid, which then malfunctions and rolls out the window, taking her with it. Should Miller fail his pursuit in the arms factory, he will instead be redirected to the parking lot. The third path can be made available if Richard does not activate the claw in time. Instead of entering the factory, he goes directly through the parking lot. After defeating a spider-legged battle tank, Miller disables Kantaris's car, forcing it to crash. If in any of these scenarios Miller fails to take action soon enough, Kantaris escapes and the mission is aborted (canonically, the spin-off game Time Crisis: Project Titan takes place after the mission's failure).

Development
Though both the arcade and PlayStation versions were developed internally at Namco, none of the arcade development team had any direct involvement with the PlayStation version. Since the PlayStation's CPU speed is much lower than that of the System 22 arcade hardware, the team reduced demands on the PlayStation CPU by cutting the game's frame rate in half, reducing the number of polygons used, emulating the real-time lighting by coloring the polygons one-by-one, and delaying the appearance of enemies so that only a certain number of enemies could appear on-screen at any time.

The development team took photos of hotels and factories in the Tokyo area as reference for the PlayStation mode's hotel design. To make the large areas in the hotel work on the hardware, the team left the portions of these areas not visible to the player unrendered. Three planned sequences - an outdoor restaurant, a missile room explosion, and a boat race - were left out because the team eventually realized that creating them was not practical, at least not within the time they had to complete the PlayStation version. New music was recorded for the Special Mission mode by Tatsuro Tani and Tomoko Tat2, using a "synthesized orchestra" of 50 individually synthesized instruments.

Soundtrack
A soundtrack Time Crisis Arcade Soundtrack was released in 1997. Another soundtrack Time Crisis 3D Sound Ensemble was released later. It contains audio dramas that depict events during and before the first game, such as Miller's battle against Sherudo from the game.

Reception
The Japanese arcade magazine Game Machine listed Time Crisis as being the most-successful arcade game of the month in April 1996.

Next Generation hailed the game as being superior even to competitor Sega's Virtua Cop 2, primarily due to the unique foot pedal maneuver. The reviewer remarked that "By creating this innovative maneuvering technique, in addition to time-based, predetermined path running, providing Story or Attack mode and challenging end-level bosses, Time Crisis thrusts the light-gun genre into a brand-new territory - and develops a whole new way of looking at, and playing, the classic light-gun game."

The PlayStation version received "favorable" reviews according to the review aggregation website GameRankings. Critics applauded the close conversion of the arcade game,   and said the special PlayStation mode greatly extended the game's lifespan, and was even superior to the original arcade campaign. And though GamePro questioned the accuracy of the bundled GunCon peripheral, reporting that "there are times when dead-on shots seem to miss", the overwhelming majority of critics deemed it the best light gun yet released for the PlayStation.

A number of critics found that despite the innovative ducking mechanic, the game is too simplistic, in particular that it lacks any powerups   or innocent bystanders that the player must avoid shooting. The lack of a multiplayer mode was also criticized, since this was a standard feature in light gun shooters. The British Computer and Video Games complained at the slowness of the PAL conversion, with reviewer Tom Guise saying that though he otherwise preferred Time Crisis over Virtua Cop, when it came to the games' respective British home releases he favored the fully PAL-optimized Virtua Cop. However, these criticisms had little impact on overall recommendations; Guise concluded that "these factors cannot stop this game from being a High Five" and Next Generation stated that "when compared to other light-gun shooters for home systems, Time Crisis is as good as it gets."

There was some disagreement over which of the PlayStation version's three methods of emulating the arcade version's foot pedal was best. GameSpot praised the reload button on the GunCon for forcing the player to use a more realistic two-handed grip, while Computer and Video Games and Electronic Gaming Monthly both said stepping on the standard joypad's buttons offers the best combination of accuracy and similarity to the foot pedal.

Electronic Gaming Monthly named the PlayStation version "Light Gun Game of the Year" at their 1997 Editors' Choice Awards, noting that the game won the unanimous vote of the editors. While they added that this was not as much of an accomplishment as it normally would be, due to the weakness of that year's competition for the category, they also said the win was well-earned by Time Crisis's graphics, sound effects, and additional modes of play.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Time Crisis (video game)


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Software performance testing

In software quality assurance, performance testing is in general a testing practice performed to determine how a system performs in terms of responsiveness and stability under a particular workload. It can also serve to investigate, measure, validate or verify other quality attributes of the system, such as scalability, reliability and resource usage.

Performance testing, a subset of performance engineering, is a computer science practice which strives to build performance standards into the implementation, design and architecture of a system.

Load testing
Load testing is the simplest form of performance testing. A load test is usually conducted to understand the behavior of the system under a specific expected load. This load can be the expected concurrent number of users on the application performing a specific number of transactions within the set duration. This test will give out the response times of all the important business critical transactions. The database, application server, etc. are also monitored during the test, this will assist in identifying bottlenecks in the application software and the hardware that the software is installed on

Stress testing
Stress testing is normally used to understand the upper limits of capacity within the system. This kind of test is done to determine the system's robustness in terms of extreme load and helps application administrators to determine if the system will perform sufficiently if the current load goes well above the expected maximum.

Soak testing
Soak testing, also known as endurance testing, is usually done to determine if the system can sustain the continuous expected load. During soak tests, memory utilization is monitored to detect potential leaks. Also important, but often overlooked is performance degradation, i.e. to ensure that the throughput and/or response times after some long period of sustained activity are as good as or better than at the beginning of the test. It essentially involves applying a significant load to a system for an extended, significant period of time. The goal is to discover how the system behaves under sustained use.

Spike testing
Spike testing is done by suddenly increasing or decreasing the load generated by a very large number of users, and observing the behavior of the system. The goal is to determine whether performance will suffer, the system will fail, or it will be able to handle dramatic changes in load.

Breakpoint testing
Breakpoint testing is similar to stress testing. An incremental load is applied over time while the system is monitored for predetermined failure conditions. Breakpoint testing is sometimes referred to as Capacity Testing because it can be said to determine the maximum capacity below which the system will perform to its required specifications or Service Level Agreements. The results of breakpoint analysis applied to a fixed environment can be used to determine the optimal scaling strategy in terms of required hardware or conditions that should trigger scaling-out events in a cloud environment.

Configuration testing
Rather than testing for performance from a load perspective, tests are created to determine the effects of configuration changes to the system's components on the system's performance and behavior. A common example would be experimenting with different methods of load-balancing.

Isolation testing
Isolation testing is not unique to performance testing but involves repeating a test execution that resulted in a system problem. Such testing can often isolate and confirm the fault domain.

Internet testing
This is a relatively new form of performance testing when global applications such as Facebook, Google and Wikipedia, are performance tested from load generators that are placed on the actual target continent whether physical machines or cloud VMs. These tests usually requires an immense amount of preparation and monitoring to be executed successfully.

Setting performance goals
Performance testing can serve different purposes:

 * It can demonstrate that the system meets performance criteria.
 * It can compare two systems to find which performs better.
 * It can measure which parts of the system or workload cause the system to perform badly.

Many performance tests are undertaken without setting sufficiently realistic, goal-oriented performance goals. The first question from a business perspective should always be, "why are we performance-testing?". These considerations are part of the business case of the testing. Performance goals will differ depending on the system's technology and purpose, but should always include some of the following:

Concurrency and throughput
If a system identifies end-users by some form of log-in procedure then a concurrency goal is highly desirable. By definition this is the largest number of concurrent system users that the system is expected to support at any given moment. The work-flow of a scripted transaction may impact true concurrency especially if the iterative part contains the log-in and log-out activity.

If the system has no concept of end-users, then performance goal is likely to be based on a maximum throughput or transaction rate.

Server response time
This refers to the time taken for one system node to respond to the request of another. A simple example would be a HTTP 'GET' request from browser client to web server. In terms of response time this is what all load testing tools actually measure. It may be relevant to set server response time goals between all nodes of the system.

Render response time
Load-testing tools have difficulty measuring render-response time, since they generally have no concept of what happens within a node apart from recognizing a period of time where there is no activity 'on the wire'. To measure render response time, it is generally necessary to include functional test scripts as part of the performance test scenario. Many load testing tools do not offer this feature.

Performance specifications
It is critical to detail performance specifications (requirements) and document them in any performance test plan. Ideally, this is done during the requirements development phase of any system development project, prior to any design effort. See Performance Engineering for more details.

However, performance testing is frequently not performed against a specification; e.g., no one will have expressed what the maximum acceptable response time for a given population of users should be. Performance testing is frequently used as part of the process of performance profile tuning. The idea is to identify the "weakest link" – there is inevitably a part of the system which, if it is made to respond faster, will result in the overall system running faster. It is sometimes a difficult task to identify which part of the system represents this critical path, and some test tools include (or can have add-ons that provide) instrumentation that runs on the server (agents) and reports transaction times, database access times, network overhead, and other server monitors, which can be analyzed together with the raw performance statistics. Without such instrumentation one might have to have someone crouched over Windows Task Manager at the server to see how much CPU load the performance tests are generating (assuming a Windows system is under test).

Performance testing can be performed across the web, and even done in different parts of the country, since it is known that the response times of the internet itself vary regionally. It can also be done in-house, although routers would then need to be configured to introduce the lag that would typically occur on public networks. Loads should be introduced to the system from realistic points. For example, if 50% of a system's user base will be accessing the system via a 56K modem connection and the other half over a T1, then the load injectors (computers that simulate real users) should either inject load over the same mix of connections (ideal) or simulate the network latency of such connections, following the same user profile.

It is always helpful to have a statement of the likely peak number of users that might be expected to use the system at peak times. If there can also be a statement of what constitutes the maximum allowable 95 percentile response time, then an injector configuration could be used to test whether the proposed system met that specification.

Questions to ask
Performance specifications should ask the following questions, at a minimum:

 * In detail, what is the performance test scope? What subsystems, interfaces, components, etc. are in and out of scope for this test?
 * For the user interfaces (UIs) involved, how many concurrent users are expected for each (specify peak vs. nominal)?
 * What does the target system (hardware) look like (specify all server and network appliance configurations)?
 * What is the Application Workload Mix of each system component? (for example: 20% log-in, 40% search, 30% item select, 10% checkout).
 * What is the System Workload Mix? [Multiple workloads may be simulated in a single performance test] (for example: 30% Workload A, 20% Workload B, 50% Workload C).
 * What are the time requirements for any/all back-end batch processes (specify peak vs. nominal)?

Prerequisites
A stable build of the system which must resemble the production environment as closely as is possible.

To ensure consistent results, the performance testing environment should be isolated from other environments, such as user acceptance testing (UAT) or development. As a best practice it is always advisable to have a separate performance testing environment resembling the production environment as much as possible.

Test conditions
In performance testing, it is often crucial for the test conditions to be similar to the expected actual use. However, in practice this is hard to arrange and not wholly possible, since production systems are subjected to unpredictable workloads. Test workloads may mimic occurrences in the production environment as far as possible, but only in the simplest systems can one exactly replicate this workload variability.

Loosely-coupled architectural implementations (e.g.: SOA) have created additional complexities with performance testing. To truly replicate production-like states, enterprise services or assets that share a common infrastructure or platform require coordinated performance testing, with all consumers creating production-like transaction volumes and load on shared infrastructures or platforms. Because this activity is so complex and costly in money and time, some organizations now use tools to monitor and simulate production-like conditions (also referred as "noise") in their performance testing environments (PTE) to understand capacity and resource requirements and verify / validate quality attributes.

Timing
It is critical to the cost performance of a new system that performance test efforts begin at the inception of the development project and extend through to deployment. The later a performance defect is detected, the higher the cost of remediation. This is true in the case of functional testing, but even more so with performance testing, due to the end-to-end nature of its scope. It is crucial for a performance test team to be involved as early as possible, because it is time-consuming to acquire and prepare the testing environment and other key performance requisites.

Tools
Performance testing is mainly divided into two main categories:

Performance scripting
This part of performance testing mainly deals with creating/scripting the work flows of key identified business processes. This can be done using a wide variety of tools.

Each of the tools mentioned in the above list (which is not exhaustive nor complete) either employs a scripting language (C, Java, JS) or some form of visual representation (drag and drop) to create and simulate end user work flows. Most of the tools allow for something called "Record & Replay", where in the performance tester will launch the testing tool, hook it on a browser or thick client and capture all the network transactions which happen between the client and server. In doing so a script is developed which can be enhanced/modified to emulate various business scenarios.

Performance monitoring
This forms the other face of performance testing. With performance monitoring, the behavior and response characteristics of the application under test are observed. The below parameters are usually monitored during the a performance test execution

Server hardware Parameters

 * CPU Utilization
 * Memory Utilization
 * Disk utilization
 * Network utilization

As a first step, the patterns generated by these 4 parameters provide a good indication on where the bottleneck lies. To determine the exact root cause of the issue, software engineers use tools such as profilers to measure what parts of a device or software contribute most to the poor performance, or to establish throughput levels (and thresholds) for maintained acceptable response time.

Technology
Performance testing technology employs one or more PCs or Unix servers to act as injectors, each emulating the presence of numbers of users and each running an automated sequence of interactions (recorded as a script, or as a series of scripts to emulate different types of user interaction) with the host whose performance is being tested. Usually, a separate PC acts as a test conductor, coordinating and gathering metrics from each of the injectors and collating performance data for reporting purposes. The usual sequence is to ramp up the load: to start with a few virtual users and increase the number over time to a predetermined maximum. The test result shows how the performance varies with the load, given as number of users vs. response time. Various tools are available to perform such tests. Tools in this category usually execute a suite of tests which emulate real users against the system. Sometimes the results can reveal oddities, e.g., that while the average response time might be acceptable, there are outliers of a few key transactions that take considerably longer to complete – something that might be caused by inefficient database queries, pictures, etc.

Performance testing can be combined with stress testing, in order to see what happens when an acceptable load is exceeded. Does the system crash? How long does it take to recover if a large load is reduced? Does its failure cause collateral damage?

Analytical Performance Modeling is a method to model the behavior of a system in a spreadsheet. The model is fed with measurements of transaction resource demands (CPU, disk I/O, LAN, WAN), weighted by the transaction-mix (business transactions per hour). The weighted transaction resource demands are added up to obtain the hourly resource demands and divided by the hourly resource capacity to obtain the resource loads. Using the response time formula (R=S/(1-U), R=response time, S=service time, U=load), response times can be calculated and calibrated with the results of the performance tests. Analytical performance modeling allows evaluation of design options and system sizing based on actual or anticipated business use. It is therefore much faster and cheaper than performance testing, though it requires thorough understanding of the hardware platforms.

Tasks to undertake
Tasks to perform such a test would include:

 * Decide whether to use internal or external resources to perform the tests, depending on inhouse expertise (or lack of it).
 * Gather or elicit performance requirements (specifications) from users and/or business analysts.
 * Develop a high-level plan (or project charter), including requirements, resources, timelines and milestones.
 * Develop a detailed performance test plan (including detailed scenarios and test cases, workloads, environment info, etc.).
 * Choose test tool(s).
 * Specify test data needed and charter effort (often overlooked, but vital to carrying out a valid performance test).
 * Develop proof-of-concept scripts for each application/component under test, using chosen test tools and strategies.
 * Develop detailed performance test project plan, including all dependencies and associated timelines.
 * Install and configure injectors/controller.
 * Configure the test environment (ideally identical hardware to the production platform), router configuration, quiet network (we don't want results upset by other users), deployment of server instrumentation, database test sets developed, etc.
 * Dry run the tests - before actually executing the load test with predefined users, a dry run is carried out in order to check the correctness of the script.
 * Execute tests – probably repeatedly (iteratively) in order to see whether any unaccounted-for factor might affect the results.
 * Analyze the results - either pass/fail, or investigation of critical path and recommendation of corrective action.

Performance testing web applications
According to the Microsoft Developer Network the Performance Testing Methodology consists of the following activities:

 * 1) Identify the Test Environment. Identify the physical test environment and the production environment as well as the tools and resources available to the test team. The physical environment includes hardware, software, and network configurations. Having a thorough understanding of the entire test environment at the outset enables more efficient test design and planning and helps you identify testing challenges early in the project. In some situations, this process must be revisited periodically throughout the project's life cycle.
 * 2) Identify Performance Acceptance Criteria. Identify the response time, throughput, and resource-use goals and constraints. In general, response time is a user concern, throughput is a business concern, and resource use is a system concern. Additionally, identify project success criteria that may not be captured by those goals and constraints; for example, using performance tests to evaluate which combination of configuration settings will result in the most desirable performance characteristics.
 * 3) Plan and Design Tests. Identify key scenarios, determine variability among representative users and how to simulate that variability, define test data, and establish metrics to be collected. Consolidate this information into one or more models of system usage to implemented, executed, and analyzed.
 * 4) Configure the Test Environment. Prepare the test environment, tools, and resources necessary to execute each strategy, as features and components become available for test. Ensure that the test environment is instrumented for resource monitoring as necessary.
 * 5) Implement the Test Design. Develop the performance tests in accordance with the test design.
 * 6) Execute the Test. Run and monitor your tests. Validate the tests, test data, and results collection. Execute validated tests for analysis while monitoring the test and the test environment.
 * 7) Analyze Results, Tune, and Retest. Analyze, consolidate, and share results data. Make a tuning change and retest. Compare the results of both tests. Each improvement made will return smaller improvement than the previous improvement. When do you stop? When you reach a CPU bottleneck, the choices then are either improve the code or add more CPU.

title: Software performance testing


text:
Communications Decency Act

The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck the act's anti-indecency provisions.

The Act is the short name of Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as specified in Section 501 of the 1996 Act. Senators James Exon and Slade Gorton introduced it to the Senate Committee of Commerce, Science, and Transportation in 1995. The amendment that became the CDA was added to the Telecommunications Act in the Senate by an 81–18 vote on June 15, 1995.

As eventually passed by Congress, Title V affected the Internet (and online communications) in two significant ways. First, it attempted to regulate both indecency (when available to children) and obscenity in cyberspace. Second, Section 230 of title 47 of the U.S. Code, part of a codification of the Communications Act of 1934 (Section 9 of the Communications Decency Act / Section 509 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) has been interpreted to mean that operators of Internet services are not publishers (and thus not legally liable for the words of third parties who use their services).

Anti-indecency and anti-obscenity provisions
The act's most controversial portions were those relating to indecency on the Internet. The relevant sections were introduced in response to fears that Internet pornography was on the rise. Indecency in TV and radio broadcasting had already been regulated by the Federal Communications Commission: broadcasting of offensive speech was restricted to hours of the day when minors were supposedly least likely to be exposed, and violators could be fined and lose their licenses. But the Internet had only recently been opened to commercial interests by the 1992 amendment to the National Science Foundation Act and thus had not been taken into consideration by previous laws. The CDA, which affected both the Internet and cable television, marked the first attempt to expand regulation to these new media.

Passed by Congress on February 1, 1996, and signed by President Bill Clinton on February 8, 1996, the CDA imposed criminal sanctions on anyone who

"knowingly (A) uses an interactive computer service to send to a specific person or persons under 18 years of age, or (B) uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs."

It further criminalized the transmission of "obscene or indecent" materials to persons known to be under 18.

Free speech advocates worked diligently and successfully to overturn the portion relating to indecent, but not obscene, speech. They argued that speech protected under the First Amendment, such as printed novels or the use of the "seven dirty words", would suddenly become unlawful when posted online. Critics also claimed the bill would have a chilling effect on the availability of medical information. Online civil liberties organizations arranged protests against the bill, such as the Black World Wide Web protest, which encouraged webmasters to make their sites' backgrounds black for 48 hours after its passage, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign.

Legal challenges
On June 12, 1996, a panel of federal judges in Philadelphia blocked part of the CDA, saying it would infringe upon adults' free speech rights. The next month, another federal court in New York struck down the portion of the CDA intended to protect children from indecent speech as too broad. On June 26, 1997, the Supreme Court upheld the Philadelphia court's decision in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, stating that the indecency provisions were an unconstitutional abridgement of the First Amendment because they did not permit parents to decide for themselves what material was acceptable for their children, extended to non-commercial speech, and did not carefully define the words "indecent" and "offensive". (The Court affirmed the New York case, Reno v. Shea, the next day, without a published opinion.)

In 2003, Congress amended the CDA to remove the indecency provisions struck down in Reno v. ACLU. A separate challenge to the provisions governing obscenity, known as Nitke v. Gonzales, was rejected by a federal court in New York in 2005. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed that decision in 2006.

Congress has made two narrower attempts to regulate children's exposure to Internet indecency since the Supreme Court overturned the CDA. Court injunction blocked enforcement of the first, the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), almost immediately after its passage in 1998; the law was later overturned. While legal challenges also dogged COPA's successor, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) of 2000, the Supreme Court upheld it as constitutional in 2004.

Section 230
Section 230 of title 47 of the U.S. Code, a codification of the Communications Act of 1934 (added by Section 9 of the Communications Decency Act / Section 509 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) was not part of the original Senate legislation, but was added in conference with the House, where it had been separately introduced by Representatives Christopher Cox and Ron Wyden as the Internet Freedom and Family Empowerment Act and passed by a near-unanimous vote on the floor. It added protection for online service providers and users from actions against them based on third-party content, stating in part, "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Effectively, this section immunizes both ISPs and Internet users from liability for torts others commit on their websites or online forums, even if the provider fails to take action after receiving notice of the harmful or offensive content.

Through the so-called Good Samaritan provision, this section also protects ISPs from liability for restricting access to certain material or giving others the technical means to restrict access to that material.

On July 23, 2013, the attorneys general of 47 states sent Congress a letter requesting that the criminal and civil immunity in section 230 be removed. The ACLU wrote of the proposal, "If Section 230 is stripped of its protections, it wouldn't take long for the vibrant culture of free speech to disappear from the web."

FOSTA-SESTA
Ann Wagner introduced the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) in the U.S. House of Representatives in April 2017. Rob Portman introduced the similar Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) in the U.S. Senate in August 2017. The combined FOSTA-SESTA package passed the House on February 27, 2018, with a vote of 388–25 and the Senate on March 21, 2018, with a vote of 97–2. President Donald Trump signed the package into law on April 11, 2018.

The bill makes it illegal to knowingly assist, facilitate, or support sex trafficking, and amends the Communications Decency Act's section 230 safe harbors (which make online services immune from civil liability for their users' actions) to exclude enforcement of federal or state sex trafficking laws from immunity. The intent is to provide serious legal consequences for websites that profit from sex trafficking and give prosecutors tools to protect their communities and give victims a pathway to justice.

The bills were criticized by pro-free speech and pro-Internet groups as a "disguised internet censorship bill" that weakens the section 230 safe harbors, places unnecessary burdens on internet companies and intermediaries that handle user-generated content or communications, with service providers required to proactively take action against sex trafficking activities, and requires lawyers to evaluate all possible scenarios under state and federal law (which may be financially unfeasible for smaller companies). Online sex workers argued that the bill would harm their safety, as the platforms they use to offer and discuss their services (as an alternative to street prostitution) had begun to reduce their services or shut down entirely because of the bill's threat of liability. Since FOSTA-SESTA passed, sex workers have reported economic instability and increases in violence, as had been predicted.

Failure-to-warn lawsuits
In Jane Doe No. 14 v. Internet Brands, Inc., the plaintiff filed an action alleging that Internet Brands, Inc.'s failure to warn users of its modelmayhem.com networking website caused her to be a victim of a rape scheme. On May 31, 2016, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the Communications Decency Act does not bar the plaintiff's failure to warn claim.

title: Communications Decency Act


text:
Talk:Franco Maria Malfatti

Untitled
Some notes for a better editing.

Lobby (maybe unappropriately used) was for what in Italy is called a corrente, a non-official association of part of the members of a party. In the old electoral system, importance inside a party was proportional to the number of tessere (the document of subsription of single voters) represented by each party member, so lobbies were organised to decide which leaders of the party would have accessed power with their friends. Being lobbies (in this sense) unofficial, there wasn't any membership. Dossetti's was the leftist wing of DC.

Also, the original sense ("grew in Dossetti's lobby") wanted to mean that Malfatti followed his political growth (both in importance and in pragmatical experience, a necessary requirement for career - in Italy interpreted as a job) frequenting Dossetti and his associates while he was very young.

When he resigned from European commission, he did it to run for parliamentar elections (I don't know if this is the same meaning of "office", which here means lower administrative charges) - he wanted to be re-elected a deputy.

The second Franco Malfatti is a different person, with quasi the same name. Maybe they were relatives (too many coincidences suggest it), as it often happens and in Italy especially, however there is a frequent confusion between the two. The second one only run an administrative career in diplomat corps, he was an ambassador and reached the highest non political charge (segretario generale) in his department for foreign affairs. I hope someone can help in rendering these notes.

Thanks in advance Gianfranco

title: Talk:Franco Maria Malfatti


text:
Talk:Test

Protected due to vandalbot attator for details. 68.39.174.238 03:37, 10 November 2005 (UTC).

Protection
I've protected this page because multiple vandals using different IPs keep vandalizing this. Any admin who feels this has been protected long enough can unprotect, or if no one does, I'll do so tomorrow. -Greg Asche (talk) 03:37, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

 * Okay, unprotected for now. -Greg Asche (talk) 22:13, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Is this testing?
Is this page a test page? 90.227.41.167 12:40, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Nope, try the Sandbox! --199.67.140.83 16:18, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

zakir sarki aamir sarki abdulsattar sarki — Preceding unsigned comment added by 182.182.9.140 (talk) 15:34, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Tester
FYI. Tester is also a lipstic etc. used for testing at cosmetics departements (just go and check out). I think this nerdish male environment has never head of it (included myself) .. //arl

River Test
In addition to the River Test, it might be worth mentioning
 * Test Valley District, a local government district and
 * Southampton Test, a UK Parliament constituency.

Testing
Apologies for suddenly twinklefying everything. You can't test some of the tags on the sandbox because it friendly won't tag pages that start with Wikipedia... I reverted it immediatly so no harm done. SGGH speak! 15:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC).

test is not experiment
A test in science is not necessarily an experiment, I think, at least not as defined in experiment, in particular w.r.t. the notion of empiricism. I think of bit testing, primality testing... well, unless one considers the evaluation of a mathematical expression as an empirical method to gain knowledge...— MFH:Talk 14:22, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
 * A test is a comparison of an expectation with an observation. This is skin to experiment, which compares observation to theory. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 23:42, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Bầu ngô
Bầu ngô là từ địa phương ở Thanh Hóa để nói về bí đỏ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.70.248.14 (talk) 08:04, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Arbansal7, 19 July 2010
Type Industry

Founded
Founder (s)

Defining a 'test'
A "test" in systems engineering is by any combination of four possible accepted methods:
 * Inspection (It's supposed to be green, and it looks green to me!)
 * Analysis (includes modeling and simulation or other accepted mathematical or analytic methods)
 * Test (control stimulus and observation of expected response)
 * Observation (use in a live environment and based on approval of subject matter experts)

In no way is any of this considered a proof. Its simply a matter of formal acceptance. In engineering, there is no test that can eliminate all possible defects.--71.245.164.83 (talk) 02:06, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Key people
Products Revenue Oprerating income Net income Total assets Total equity Employees Subsidiaries Website

Not done: please be more specific about what needs to be changed. Spigot Map  21:31, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Coordinate error
The following coordinate fixes are needed for

—201.141.242.118 (talk) 04:48, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Sandbox link
The Sandbox link at the top of the talk page is good -- but it would be helpful if a similar link were prominent at the top of the disambig page itself. Note that an innocent person googling "wikipedia test" has a hard time getting to the sandbox -- let's try to make things better! -71.174.178.251 (talk) 19:53, 7 June 2014 (UTC)
 * That seems a useful suggestion to me, so I've added a hatnote. Qwfp (talk) 08:31, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Title and URL of the page
The title of the page should be "Test(disambiguation)", and not only "Test". Correspondigly, the URL of the page should be "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_(disambiguation)" and not only "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.104.110.111 (talk) 14:40, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 September 2015
I have created an account - I wasn't sure why I couldn't edit the page. Is registration a separate process from creating an account?

The Software Testing page is not listed under the Technology section. I want this link to be present.

Mbplautz (talk) 16:49, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

As for why you couldn't edit the page - your account is not yet autoconfirmed (4 days and 10 edits), which is what you need to edit semi-protected pages - Arjayay (talk) 17:13, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ - have moved Software testing and Toxicology testing up from "See also" and deleted Chemical test from that section as it was duplicated

Medical meanings
I don't see any links to the following:
 * Drug test
 * Clinical trial (sometimes popularly referred to as a "drug test")
 * An individual subprocedure of a physical examination—not sure which article is correct for this last one, other than Physical examination itself; Medical sign § Signs as tests is partially relevant

Could these reasonably be added? --SoledadKabocha (talk) 23:28, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 May 2018
2601:281:C702:7AD:E5EC:C5B1:5D2E:A45 (talk) 08:47, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. — KuyaBriBri Talk 13:39, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 15 October 2018
Triumfia (talk) 14:18, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:20, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

Does this work?
hello, i tried to write a comment on the Catalan page but it kept getting lost and i couldn't write anything. I think that the Catalan copy of your website has a very weak signal and i hope that you can get a bigger server or something. It is not very fair when you are trying to learn a foreign language and you spend ages trying to write something and then it just disappears. Also you could do with making it easier for people who are not very technical because it is not always very obvious which button you are supposed to press. I hope this makes sense. Marihuana Rajoy (talk) 04:53, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Maybe you can help me. There is an article in Catalan about the lower part of Navarre which is in France, and they have got the name in Basque but not in French. I think it was written by some kind of Nationalist. But when i want to change it, the exit button on that page is broken because there is never a new screen where you can enter some additional content. Marihuana Rajoy (talk) 05:00, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

The edit button not the exit button. There is some kind of spell checker that tries this sort of subterfuge whenever i type. Marihuana Rajoy (talk) 05:02, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

By the way i am English so i don't know whether after Brexit i will lose access to the Catalan pages altogether. Do you know if they are sponsored by the minority languages funding or anything like that? Marihuana Rajoy (talk) 05:06, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Catalan wikipedia is independent. If you contribute edits there you will be aiding Catalan wikipedia when you add in the French name for that part of Navarre. --Ancheta Wis    (talk  | contribs) 09:22, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Your Global contributions as (User:Marihuana Rajoy) are indeed showing up.
 * ca.wikipedia.org
 * en.wikipedia.org
 * --Ancheta Wis   (talk  | contribs) 06:16, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Your comments are all visible on Discussió:Baixa_Navarra. You can't edit the page Baixa_Navarra yet as it's semi-protected. User:Jordiventura96 has now read your comments on the talk page and added the French name to the page. A spell-checker won't change one correctly-spelled word into another. Brexit will have no effect on your access to any Wikipedia projects. It might be less confusing to start off by editing your native-language Wikipedia. --Qwfp (talk) 09:29, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 December 2019
14.139.48.162 (talk) 06:46, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

this is an original page
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate.  CAPTAIN MEDUSA   talk  06:58, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 October 2022
68.97.143.86 (talk) 22:50, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. – Recoil (talk) 23:21, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Test


text:
Hide-and-seek

Hide-and-seek (sometimes known as hide-and-go-seek) is a popular children's game in which at least two players (usually at least three) conceal themselves in a set environment, to be found by one or more seekers. The game is played by one chosen player (designated as being "it") counting to a predetermined number with eyes closed while the other players hide. After reaching this number, the player who is "it" calls "Ready or not, here I come!" or "Coming, ready or not!" and then attempts to locate all concealed players.

The game can end in one of several ways. The most common way of ending is the player chosen as "it" locates all players; the player found first is the loser and is chosen to be "it" in the next game. The player found last is the winner. Another common variation has the seeker counting at "home base"; the hiders can either remain hidden or they can come out of hiding to race to home base; once they touch it, they are "safe" and cannot be tagged.

The game is an example of an oral tradition, as it is commonly passed by children.

Variants
Different versions of the game are played around the world, under a variety of names.

One variant is called "sardines", in which only one person hides and the others must find him or her, hiding with him / her when they do so. The hiding places become progressively more cramped, like sardines in a tin. The last person to find the hiding group is the loser, and becomes the hider for the next round. A. M. Burrage calls this version of the game "Smee" in his 1931 ghost story of the same name. In the Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schulz, a variation of Sardines called "Ha Ha Herman" is played, in which the seekers call out "ha ha', and the person hiding has to respond by saying "Herman". In some versions of the game, after the first hider is caught or if no other players can be found over a period of time, the seeker calls out a previously-agreed phrase (such as "Olly olly oxen free", "Come out, come out wherever you are" or "All in, All in, Everybody out there all in free") to signal the other hiders to return to base for the next round. The seeker must return to "home base" after finding the hiders, before the hiders get back. Conversely, the hiders must get back to "home base" before the seeker sees them and returns. The hiders hide until they are spotted by the seeker, who chants, "Forty, forty, I see you" (sometimes shortened to "Forty, forty, see you"). Once spotted, the hider must run to "home base" (where the seeker was counting while the other players hid) and touch it before they are "tipped" (tagged, or touched) by the seeker. If tagged, that hider becomes the new seeker. Forty forty has many regional names including 'block one two three' in North East England and Scotland, 'relievo one two three' in Wilmslow, 'forty forty' in South East England, 'mob' in Bristol and South Wales, 'pom pom' in Norwich, 'I-erkey' in Leicester, 'hicky one two three' in Chester, 'rally one two three' in Coventry, ' Ackey 123' in Birmingham and '44 Homes' in Australia.

History
Whilst hide-and-seek is evidently likely a very ancient and instinctual childhood game from time immemorial, an early attested version of the game was called  apodidraskinda in Ancient Greek. A second century Greek writer named Julius Pollux mentioned the game for the first time. Then as now, it was played the same with one player closing their eyes and counting while the other players hide. This game was also found in an early painting discovered at Herculaneum, dating back to about the second century AD.

International competition
The Hide-and-Seek World Championship was an international hide-and-seek competition held from 2010 through 2017. The game is a derivative of the Italian version of hide-and-seek, "nascondino".

The championship was first held in 2010 in Bergamo, Italy, as an initiative of CTRL Magazine. Though it started out as a joke, the event grew year after year. The 2016 and 2017 competitions took place in Consonno, a ghost town or "The Italian Las Vegas", located in the district of Lecco, Lombardy.

The winning team was awarded "The Golden Fig Leaf", which is biblically the symbol of hiding, referring to the story of Adam and Eve.

Yasuo Hazaki, a graduate of Nippon Sport Science University, and professor of media studies at Josai University in Sakado, Japan, had set up a campaign in 2013 to promote hide-and-seek for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. The game Hazaki was promoting was a slightly different traditional Japanese game, more similar to a game of tag. Hazaki contacted the Nascondino World Championship organizers and said that nascondino rules were more appropriate to be a candidate to the Olympics.

title: Hide-and-seek


text:
Bellingham, Washington

Bellingham is the county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies 21 mi south of the U.S.–Canada border, between Vancouver, British Columbia, 52 mi to the northwest and Seattle (90 mi to the south.

The population was 91,482 at the 2020 census, and estimated to be 94,720 in 2023. It is the site of Western Washington University, Bellingham International Airport, and the southern terminus of the Alaska Marine Highway. Bellingham is the northernmost city with a population of more than 90,000 people in the contiguous United States.

The area around Bellingham Bay, named in 1792 by George Vancouver, is the ancestral home of several Coast Salish groups. European settlement in modern-day Bellingham began in the 1850s and several coal mining towns grew in later years. The city of Bellingham was incorporated in 1903 through the consolidation of several settlements, among them Fairhaven. Local industries shifted away from coal in the mid-20th century; the industrial areas on the Bellingham waterfront have undergone redevelopment into a mixed-use neighborhood since the 2000s.

History

Bellingham has been inhabited by Indigenous peoples for millennia. The city of Bellingham and its surrounding area is the intersection of the territories of many Coast Salishan peoples. The Lummi, Nooksack, Samish, and Nuwaha in particular fished in Bellingham Bay and shared the hunting and gathering grounds in the nearby forests and prairies. Indigenous people continue to live in and around Bellingham, particularly the Lummi, who have a reservation directly west of the city.

The modern city of Bellingham, incorporated in 1903, consolidated four settlements: Bellingham, Whatcom, Fairhaven, and Sehome. It takes its name from Bellingham Bay, named by George Vancouver in 1792, for Sir William Bellingham.

The first European immigrants reached the area about 1852 when Henry Roeder and Russel Peabody set up a lumber mill at Whatcom, now the northern part of Bellingham. Lumber cutting and milling continues to the present in Whatcom county. At about the same time, Dan Harris arrived, claiming a homestead along Padden Creek, and after acquiring surrounding properties, platted the town of Fairhaven in 1883. In 1858, the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush caused a short lived population growth that established the community.

Coal was mined in the Bellingham Bay area from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries starting when Henry Roeder's agents discovered coal south of Whatcom Creek, in an area called Sehome, now downtown Bellingham, in 1854. They sold the coal-bearing land to San Francisco investors who established the Bellingham Bay Coal Company, eventually a subsidiary of the Black Diamond Coal Mining Company. After a hundred years of extensive mining beneath present-day Bellingham, the last mine closed in 1955.

In the early 1890s, three railroad lines arrived, connecting the bay cities to a nationwide market of builders. In 1889, Pierre Cornwall and an association of investors formed the Bellingham Bay Improvement Company (BBIC). The BBIC invested in several diverse enterprises such as shipping, coal, mining, railroad construction, real estate sales and utilities. Even though their dreams of turning the cities by the bay into a Pacific Northwest metropolis never came to fruition, the BBIC made an immense contribution to the economic development of Bellingham.

BBIC was not the only outside firm with an interest in the bay area utilities. The General Electric Company of New York purchased the Fairhaven Line and New Whatcom street rail line in 1897. In 1898, the utility merged into the Northern Railway and Improvement Company which prompted the Electric Corporation of Boston to purchase a large block of shares.

In 1890, Fairhaven developers bought the tiny community of Bellingham. Whatcom and Sehome merged in 1891 to form New Whatcom (1903 act of the State legislature dropped "New" from the name.) At first, attempts to combine Fairhaven and Whatcom failed, and there was controversy over the name of the proposed new city. Whatcom citizens would not support a city named Fairhaven, and Fairhaven residents would not support a city named Whatcom. They eventually settled on the name Bellingham, which remains today. Voting a second time for a final merger of Fairhaven and Whatcom into a single city, the resolution passed with 2163 votes for and 596 against.

Bellingham was officially incorporated on December 28, 1903, as a result of the incremental consolidation of the four towns initially situated on the east of Bellingham Bay during the final decade of the 19th Century. Whatcom is today's "Old Town" area and was founded with Roeder's Mill in 1852. Sehome was an area of downtown founded with the Sehome Coal Mine in 1854. Bellingham was further south near Boulevard Park, founded in 1883 and purchased in 1890 by Fairhaven. Fairhaven was a large commercial district with its own harbor, founded in 1883, by Dan Harris, around his initial homestead on Padden Creek.

Bellingham was the site of the Bellingham riots against East Indian (Sikh) immigrant workers in 1907. A mob of 400–500 white men, predominantly members of the Asiatic Exclusion League, with intentions to exclude East Indian immigrants from the work force of the local lumber mills, attacked the homes of the South Asian Indians. The Indians were mostly Sikhs but were labeled as Hindus by much of the media of the day.

Bellingham's proximity to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and to the Inside Passage to Alaska helped to retain some cannery operations. Pacific American Fisheries (P.A.F.), for example, shipped empty cans to Alaska, where they were packed with fish and shipped back.

Geography
The city is situated on Bellingham Bay which is protected by Lummi Island, Portage Island, and the Lummi Peninsula, and opens onto the Strait of Georgia. It lies west of Mount Baker and Lake Whatcom (from which it gets its drinking water) and north of the Chuckanut Mountains and the Skagit Valley. Whatcom Creek runs through the center of the city. Bellingham is 18 mi south of the US-Canada border and 50 mi southeast of Vancouver.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 30.511 sqmi, of which, 28.198 sqmi is land and 2.313 sqmi is water. The lowest elevations are at sea level along the waterfront. Alabama Hill is one of the higher points in the city at about 500 ft. Elevations of 800 ft are found near Yew Street Hill north of Lake Padden and near Galbraith Mountain. South and eastward of the city limits are taller foothills of the North Cascades mountains. Mount Baker is the largest peak in the local area, with a summit elevation of 10778 ft that is only 31 mi from Bellingham Bay. Mount Baker is visible from many parts of the city and western Whatcom County. Lake Whatcom forms part of the eastern boundary of the city, while many smaller lakes and wetland areas are found around the region.

Situated at a latitude of 48.75 North, and thus north of the 48°34' parallel, Bellingham is one of only a few cities in the continental United States that experience astronomical twilight for the entire night. The phenomenon occurs every year between June 14 and 28.

Bellingham's neighborhoods are Alabama Hill, Barkley, Birchwood, Columbia, Cordata, Cornwall Park, Downtown Central Business District, Edgemoor, Fairhaven, Happy Valley, Irongate, King Mountain, Lettered Streets, Meridian, Puget, Roosevelt, Samish, Sehome, Silver Beach, South, South Hill, Sunnyland, Whatcom Falls, Western Washington University (WWU) (including the campus), and York.

Climate
Bellingham's climate is generally mild and typical of the Puget Sound region; classified as warm-summer Mediterranean (Köppen: Csb) or oceanic (Trewartha: Do). The city is strongly influenced by the Cascade Range and Olympic Mountains. The Cascades to the east block continental influence, while the Olympics provide a rain shadow effect that buffers Bellingham from much of the rainfall approaching from the southwest.

Bellingham receives an average annual rainfall of 34.84 in, which is slightly less than nearby Seattle. November is typically the wettest month, with numerous frontal rainstorms. Still, precipitation is distributed throughout the rainy period extending from October through April.

Bellingham has lowest average sunshine amount of any city in the US. Despite this, Bellingham has less overcast days on average than Seattle (SeaTac), Everett (Paine Field) and Olympia. The hottest summer days rarely exceed 90 °F and the warmest temperature on record is 100 °F on August 12, 2021. This is markedly cooler than the record high for Seattle (108 °F) and most other Washington locations. Drought is rare, although some summers are noticeably drier than others and some normally reliable wells have been known to run dry in August and September. Nevertheless, crops are more frequently ruined by too much rain rather than too little.

Bellingham's proximity to the Fraser River valley occasionally subjects it to a harsh winter weather pattern (termed a 'north-Easter') wherein an upper-level trough drives cold Arctic air from the Canadian interior southwesterly through the Fraser River Canyon. Such an event was recorded on November 28, 2006, when air temperatures of 12 °F were accompanied by 30 to 48 mph winds. Wind chill values reached -10 °F according to NOAA. Several days into this pattern, local ponds and smaller lakes freeze solidly enough to allow skating. These outflow winds also can collide with Gulf of Alaska moisture and create ice, snow, or heavy rains; the freezing rain can create a phenomenon referred to as a "silver thaw" that produces hazardous roads among other inconveniences.

Its reverse, the "Pineapple Express", refers to acutely mild autumn and winter spells – for most of such a spell, an unusually warm and steady wind comes out of the south. It will typically follow several days of Arctic northeast outflow winds, and it can melt significant snow accumulations quickly, pushing drainage systems to their limits.

2020 census
As of the 2020 census, there were 91,482 people, 39,236 households, and 18,252 families residing in the city.

2010 census
As of the 2010 census, there were 80,885 people, 34,671 households, and 16,129 families residing in the city. The population density was 2986.9 PD/sqmi. There were 36,760 housing units at an average density of 1357.5 /sqmi. The racial makeup of the city was 84.9% White, 1.3% African American, 1.3% Native American, 5.1% Asian, 0.3% Pacific Islander, 2.8% from other races, and 4.3% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 7.0% of the population.

There were 34,671 households, of which 21.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 34.2% were married couples living together, 8.9% had a female householder with no husband present, 3.5% had a male householder with no wife present, and 53.5% were non-families. 35.3% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.18 and the average family size was 2.79.

The median age in the city was 31.3 years. 15.6% of residents were under the age of 18; 23.5% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 25.9% were from 25 to 44; 22% were from 45 to 64; and 12.8% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 48.8% male and 51.2% female.

2000 census
As of 2000, the median income for a household in the city was $32,530, and the median income for a family was $47,196. Males had a median income of $35,288 versus $25,971 for females. The per capita income for the city was $19,483. About 9.4% of families and 20.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 17.2% of those under age 18 and 9.0% of those aged 65 or over.

Economy
The mean annual salary of a wage earner in Bellingham is $49,363, which is below the Washington State average of $66,870.

In the first quarter of 2017, Bellingham's median home sale was $382,763, compared to the Whatcom County median of $322,779. Strong job and income growth, along with low inventory of homes for sale, have contributed to a median monthly rental payment in February 2017 of $1,526.

Largest employers

According to the City's 2021 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the largest employers in the city are:

Events

 * The Ski to Sea race is a team relay race made up of seven legs: cross country skiing, downhill skiing (or snowboarding), running, road biking, canoeing (2 person), mountain biking, and kayaking. The racers begin at the Mount Baker Ski Area and make their way down to the finish line on Bellingham Bay. Organized by the Bellingham/Whatcom Chamber of Commerce & Industry, the event was first held in 1973 and traces its roots to the 1911 Mt. Baker Marathon.
 * The Bellingham Bay Marathon, Half Marathon, 10K & 5K is held annually on the last Sunday in September, attracting approximately 2,500 runners and walkers each year. The Boston-qualifier marathon starts near Gooseberry Point on Lummi Nation and circumnavigates Bellingham Bay to finish in downtown Bellingham. The half marathon, 10K, and 5K races all start and end at Depot Market Square.
 * The Whatcom Artist Studio Tour is an annual event featuring local artists working in a variety of media. On the first two weekends in October, artists open their studios up to the public.
 * The Bellingham Highland Games & Scottish Festival is held every year at Ferndale's Hovander Park the first full weekend in June. The outdoor event celebrates Scottish culture and heritage, with two days of games, spectator sports, dancing, music and food.
 * LinuxFest Northwest is a free conference dedicated to discussion and development of the Linux operating system and other open-source and free-software projects. It is a weekend event held at Bellingham Technical College in late April or early May which draws more than a thousand enthusiasts.
 * The annual International Day of Peace is celebrated in Bellingham on September 21. The holiday was instituted by the United Nations as a 24-hour global cease-fire. The Bellingham-based Whatcom Peace & Justice Center publishes a calendar of upcoming activist events with a theme of non-violence, community dissent, and worldwide peace.
 * The Bellingham Festival of Music is an annual celebration of orchestral and chamber concerts, held in July, hosting musicians from North American orchestral ensembles.
 * Bellingham Pride is a gay pride parade and festival held in July each year to celebrate LGBT people and history. The parade passes through the downtown and ends in the public market area.

Beer
Craft beer is a major emerging industry in Bellingham. There are at least 15 breweries within Bellingham city limits and three additional breweries in greater Whatcom County. In 2022, these breweries combined won 23 medals at seven national and international brewery competitions.

Most of Bellingham’s breweries are located within a couple miles of each other in the downtown core. Some are in very close proximity.

Downtown
The Bellingham Farmers Market is open on Saturdays from early April to late December. Originally opened in 1993, the Farmers Market now features more than 50 vendors, music and community events. The association also operates a weekly Wednesday market in nearby Fairhaven.

Wednesday nights in the summer see Downtown Sounds, a family-friendly concert series featuring food booths and a beer garden with local breweries held on Bay Street.

From May to September, the Downtown Bellingham Partnership runs the Commercial Street Night Market, with local food, artisan vendors, live music and performances.

Local attractions

The Whatcom Museum of History and Art sponsors exhibits of painting, sculpture, local history, and is an active participant in the city's monthly Gallery Walks which are pedestrian tours of the historic buildings of the city, offering history and art lessons for local schools and adult groups, and historic cruises on Bellingham Bay.

The SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention, formerly known as the American Museum of Radio and Electricity, has a collection of rare artifacts from 1580 into the 1950s, providing educational resources about the history of electronics and radio broadcasting. The Spark Museum had founded KMRE FM KMRE-LP 102.3 FM, a low-power FM radio station which broadcast a number of old shows popular many decades ago, as well as programming of general interest to the community. KMRE was housed at the museum in the beginning, but moved to The Bellingham National Bank Building, a few blocks from the museum because they needed more space. The station's license was cancelled on June 20, 2023.

Mindport is a privately funded arts and science museum.

Whatcom Falls Park is a 241 acre public park encompassing the Whatcom Creek gorge, running directly through the heart of the city. It has four sets of waterfalls and several miles of walking trails. Popular activities during warmer weather include swimming, fishing, and strolling along the numerous walking trails. On June 10, 1999, the Olympic pipeline explosion occurred in Whatcom Falls Park, killing three boys who were playing in the vicinity. Operated by Olympic Pipe Line Company, the pipeline that crossed Whatcom and Hanna Creeks leaked gasoline that turned the creeks pink, and then exploded into flames.

About 50 km east of Bellingham the Mount Baker Ski Area holds the world record for the greatest amount of snowfall in one season (winter 1998–1999). During most years the depth of accumulated snow exceeds 12 ft.

Several miles from Bellingham in the southern part of Whatcom County, there are many places for outdoor recreation, including Larrabee State Park (popular for hiking), Lake Padden (popular for swimming, fishing and golfing), and Lake Samish. Chuckanut Drive (Washington State Route 11), which passes through Fairhaven, has cliffside views of the sea, the San Juan Islands and the Olympic Mountains, the hills and forests of the Chuckanut mountains, and several small bays along the edge of the Salish Sea.

To the east of the city lies Lake Whatcom, which provides the local public water supply and is the source of Whatcom Creek.

Between Lake Whatcom and Lake Padden is North Lookout Mountain, known locally as Galbraith Mountain, with many mountain bike trails.

In the waters of the Georgia Strait and Puget Sound it is possible to go whale watching to see several pods of orcas (killer whales).

Bellis Fair Mall, the city's main shopping mall, opened in 1988.

Music scene
Bellingham's location between two major cities, universities, record labels, and music magazines have all contributed to making Bellingham a desirable and recognized local music scene. The presence of a large university-age population has helped Bellingham become home to a number of regionally and nationally noted musical acts such as Death Cab for Cutie, Odesza, The Posies, Crayon, Idiot Pilot, Mono Men, No-Fi Soul Rebellion, Sculptured, Federation X, The Trucks, Black Eyes & Neckties, Black Breath, The High Mountain String Band, Shimmertraps, Dizzy Spins, and Shook Ones. Local independent record labels include Estrus Records and Clickpop Records. The city was also home to ''What's Up! Magazine'' which covered the local music scene for 22 years ending in March 2020, and Lemonade Magazine, devoted to music and entertainment of all kinds.

Bellingham is also the home of an active classical music scene which includes the Bellingham Symphony Orchestra (formerly the Whatcom Symphony Orchestra), North Sound Youth Symphony, numerous community music groups and choirs, and the internationally recognized Bellingham Festival of Music.

Literary scene
Bellingham is home to an active writers community at the local universities and independent of them. Western Washington University's English Department publishes the Bellingham Review. In 2011, the city hosted the first annual Chuckanut Writers Conference, run by Whatcom Community College and Village Books, a local bookstore. Clover, A Literary Rag, a publication of the Independent Writers' Studio, has produced 9 volumes since 2010. The city is home to writers including Steve Martini and George Dyson. The Bellingham Public Library provides free library services at the Central Library, Barkley Branch and Fairhaven Branch.

Local theater

Bellingham's theater culture is boosted by the performing arts department at Western Washington University. There are several theaters and productions in Bellingham:
 * Bellingham Theatre Guild, a non-profit community theater was founded in 1929. Hilary Swank performed here before moving to Los Angeles to pursue her career in acting.
 * Mount Baker Theatre is the largest performing arts facility north of Seattle and is listed on the register of National Historic Places. The theater is an example of Moorish architecture, with several sections of the 1927 theater having been restored over the past two decades.
 * Upfront Theatre, an improv comedy venue established by Bellingham resident Ryan Stiles of Whose Line Is It Anyway? fame.
 * Northwest Ballet, a regional ballet company, performs classical ballets.
 * iDiOM Theater, a non-profit regional theater: almost every show is new, locally written work.
 * Firehouse Performing Arts Center, a Fairhaven firehouse converted into a dance classroom and theater.

Activism
The Whatcom Peace & Justice Center was founded in 2002 by local activists, and has been one of the most active such centers in the nation.

In October 2006, the Bellingham City Council passed a Troops Home! resolution, making Bellingham the first city in the state of Washington to pass the resolution. Two years later, the City Council passed a resolution urging elected representatives and the federal government to avoid war with Iran, becoming the first city in the state to do so. In 2012, the City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling upon the federal government to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in the case of FEC v. Citizens United by declaring that U.S. Constitutional rights apply to natural persons and not to corporations. In 2014, coinciding with Columbus Day that celebrates the arrival of European explorers, the City Council officially established Coast Salish Day to celebrate the Native American peoples who continue to call the geographic region their home.

In 2015, the Seattle Arctic drilling protests spread to Bellingham when a protester chained herself to the anchor chain of a Royal Dutch Shell ship for 63 hours.

Future development

Bellingham saw apartment vacancy hit 0.6% in 2016, and plans to use multi-family housing to accommodate more than 50% of the projected growth in housing units (16,525 units by 2036). According to Aaron Terrazas, senior economist at Zillow, "Given the area's pace of growth, it would require very aggressive building to keep rent affordability in check."

The city has resisted expanding the Urban Growth Area for many years, and hopes to fit both multi-family and single-family growth within the city limits. Builders counter that even City planners acknowledge that the city is "largely built out" and that the remaining land is difficult or expensive to build on. Attempts to increase density, ease restrictions on 'accessory dwelling units', or even to develop land already zoned residential, are regularly met with fierce neighborhood opposition: Padden Trails was opposed by the Samish Neighborhood Association; a dense development at the Sunnyland D.O.T. site was scaled-down; Fairhaven neighbors led the effort to prevent the development of Fairhaven Highlands, (now Chuckanut Ridge), which the City ended up purchasing for $8.2 million, preventing more than 700 new housing units; neighborhood groups pressured the City Council to go against staff recommendation to rezone Squalicum Lofts for residential development.

In 2017, the Bellingham City Council began acknowledging housing affordability as a critical issue, and hosted a town hall meeting on housing affordability and homelessness.

Waterfront redevelopment
The Bellingham waterfront has served as an industrial center for more than a century, starting with the arrival of Henry Roeder and Russell Peabody in the mid-1800s.

Georgia-Pacific (G-P) purchased the Puget Sound Pulp and Timber Company in 1963 and operated a pulp mill on the central downtown waterfront until 2001. In 1965, G-P built a chlor-alkali facility, which became a source of mercury contamination in the Whatcom Waterway and on the uplands of the site for decades. The documentary film, "Smells Like Money – The Story of Bellingham's Georgia Pacific Plant" tells the story of the site, which has since been purchased by the Port of Bellingham chiefly to create a marina in the 37 acre wastewater lagoon. The Port of Bellingham purchased the G-P site for $10 with the understanding that the port would assume liability for the contamination. The City of Bellingham and the Port of Bellingham entered into several interlocal agreements in which the City agreed to pay for all infrastructure costs, and the Port would create a marina, clean up the site, and retain all zoning.

The cleanup site (approximately 74 acre) was divided into two areas: pulp and tissue mill area and the chlor-alkali area. Contaminated soils and building materials were removed in 2011 and 2013; the Department of Ecology finalized the Interim Cleanup Work Plan in January 2017, and that work was completed in April 2017 when 31 acres were capped with a protective barrier. Work continues on evaluating cleanup alternatives for the entire chlor-alkali area of the site.

The City and Port have entered into a partnership to redevelop the property, and in 2013 contracted with Harcourt Developments to develop 19 acre. The Granary Building remodel will be completed in 2017; Harcourt has submitted plans for two waterfront condo buildings in 2018 and 2019; the city planned to construct two main roads through the side in 2017.

Sports
The people of Bellingham pursue a diverse range of amateur sports, with skiing and snowboarding at the Mount Baker Ski Area popular in the winter and kayaking and cycling in the summer. Mt. Baker claims a world record for seasonal snowfall, with 1140 in recorded in the 1998–1999 season.

Western Washington University is home to NCAA Division II National Women's Rowing Champions. The Lady Vikings became Western's first NCAA champion team in 2005 and won again in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2011. The 2011-2012 Western Men's Basketball team won the NCAA Division II National Championship. In 2016, the nationally ranked Western Women's Soccer Team won the NCAA Division II National Championship.

Western Washington University also operates a collegiate road cycling program that took top-5 positions nationwide at the 2006 nationals.

Future Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. began his professional career with the short-season class A Bellingham Mariners of the Northwest League in 1987.

Government
The City of Bellingham has a non-partisan strong-mayor, weak-council form of government. The directly elected mayor serves a four-year term. Six of the seven city council members are elected by ward for staggered four-year terms. The seventh council member is elected at-large every two years.

A municipal court judge is also elected for four-year terms.

Crime
The city maintains Bellingham Police Department and fire department and operates the countywide Medic One medical emergency response service through an agreement with Whatcom County. According to Uniform Crime Report statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2022, there were 2 murders, 380 violent crimes and 6,517 property crimes per 100,000 residents. Of these, the violent crimes consisted of 22 forcible rapes, 135 robberies and 221 aggravated assaults, while 804 burglaries, 5,193 larceny-thefts, 500 motor vehicle thefts and 20 arson defined the property offenses.

Education

Bellingham School District is the local school district. There are four public high schools in Bellingham: Bellingham High School, Options High School, Sehome High School, and Squalicum High School. Bellingham has four public middle schools: Kulshan Middle School, Shuksan Middle School, Fairhaven Middle School, and Whatcom Middle School which was recently rebuilt after extensive fire damage in 2009.

Private schools in Bellingham include Whatcom Hills Waldorf School (Prekindergarten through 8th grade), Whatcom Day Academy (Prekindergarten to 8th grade), St. Paul's Academy (Prekindergarten to 12th grade), Assumption Catholic School (Prekindergarten to 8th grade), and The Franklin Academy (Preschool to 8th grade). Western Washington University is located in Bellingham. It has more than 16,000 students. The Northwest Film School is a private, non-profit educational institution specializing in digital media production. It operates in a partnership with Western Washington University to offer a one-year certificate in Video Production.

Bellingham has two community colleges:
 * Whatcom Community College
 * Bellingham Technical College

Lummi Nation School has a Bellingham postal address but it is away from the city limits in an unincorporated area on the Lummi reservation.

Newspapers
The Bellingham Herald is published daily in Bellingham. Other newspapers include Whatcom Watch and The Front (formerly Western Front), which covers largely university affairs. In 2020, the Salish Current was founded as an online, nonprofit option for regional news. The Bellingham Business Journal, also known online as BBJ Today, ceased publication in 2020. Cascadia Daily News debuted on January 24, 2022, as a daily online publication and weekly print publication, replacing Cascadia Weekly, which was available until 2021.

Television
Bellingham and Whatcom County are part of the Seattle television market. The area has had exceptionally early and strong penetration of cable television since the 1950s, and there have never been any local translators of the major Seattle TV stations.

Stations in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, can be viewed over the air with suitable antennae, but those in Seattle are too distant to receive in most locations in the county. Whatcom County residents can also receive CBC and CTV stations via cable service. KVOS-TV, an affiliate of the Spanish-language network Univision, is available in most parts of Bellingham with an antenna as well.

The City of Bellingham also operates BTV, a public access channel available on YouTube or Xfinity channel 10.

Magazines

 * Bellingham on Tap is a monthly nightlife magazine featuring complete happy hour and bar special listings, reviews, events, local interest articles, and columns including sex advice, rants, and astrology.
 * Bellingham Alive Magazine is a bi-monthly lifestyle magazine focusing on life in Whatcom, Skagit, San Juan and Island counties.
 * Frequency: The Snowboarder's Journal is an independent snowboarding magazine based in Bellingham, published quarterly.
 * What's Up! is a monthly music magazine focused on local music. It covers live shows, band bios and new artist releases.
 * Business Pulse has been covering Bellingham and Whatcom County business news and business profiles since 1975.
 * Southside Living is mailed directly to residents of Bellingham's Chuckanut Drive, Edgemoor, Fairhaven, and South Hill neighborhoods.
 * Trails Magazine is an independent backpacking and hiking magazine based in Bellingham and published quarterly.

Transportation

Bellingham is bisected by Interstate 5 (I-5), which connects it to Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland, Oregon. The city also has three state highways: State Route 11, a scenic byway through the Chuckanut Mountains; State Route 539, which connects to Lynden and the Canadian border; and State Route 542, which travels east to the Mount Baker Ski Area.

The Bellingham International Airport offers scheduled commuter flights to and from Seattle and Friday Harbor, Washington, and regularly scheduled jet service to various West Coast airports via Alaska Airlines, Allegiant Air, and Southwest Airlines. Alaska Airlines and Allegiant Air used to fly to Hawaii from Bellingham, serving Honolulu, Kahului, and Kona at various times, but this service ceased by 2019. The airport is home of the first Air and Marine Operations Center, to assist the US Department of Homeland Security with border surveillance.

The Whatcom Transportation Authority (WTA) is the county's public transit agency and operates fixed bus service within Bellingham and its neighboring cities. The agency has several hubs, including the downtown station, the Western Washington University campus, and Cordata Station near Bellis Fair Mall, which is served by BoltBus intercity express buses to Seattle and Vancouver. Several corridors have frequent service that is branded as "GO Lines", with service every 15 minutes. WTA also offers intercity service to Mount Vernon, connecting with Skagit Transit for onward service to Everett.

The city's main train station, Fairhaven Station, is served by scheduled Amtrak Cascades service to Vancouver and Seattle twice a day. Amtrak also operates one Thruway bus trip to supplement its train service on the corridor. The Bellingham Cruise Terminal is adjacent to the Amtrak station and serves as the southern terminus of the Alaska Marine Highway, a state-run ferry for passengers and vehicles. The ferries provide service to Ketchikan, Juneau, Prince Rupert, and Haines. The terminal is also served by San Juan Cruises, which provides seasonal passenger ferry service to the San Juan Islands and Friday Harbor.

Notable people

 * AeTopus (Bryan Tewell Hughes) – electronic music composer and producer (works and resides in Bellingham)
 * Bob Arbogast – radio-television host and voice actor
 * Jon Auer – vocalist, guitarist, songwriter, founding member of the Posies
 * Steve Baker – professional motorcycle racer and member of the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame
 * Carlos Becerra – TV presenter
 * Billy Burke – television and film actor, Twilight, Zoo
 * Misha Collins – actor, Supernatural
 * Ramsey Denison – documentary filmmaker, editor
 * J. J. Donovan – Washington state businessman and politician
 * Raymond Evans- USCG and Recipient of the Navy Cross
 * Ben Gibbard – lead singer for Death Cab for Cutie
 * Ryan Hietala – professional golfer
 * Yolanda Hughes-Heying – IFBB professional bodybuilder
 * Paul Jessup – world record holder for discus; competed in the 1932 Summer Olympics
 * Oscar Jimenez – soccer player for Louisville City FC
 * Anna Leader – poet and novelist
 * Jake Locker – (born in Bellingham), quarterback for University of Washington and NFL's Tennessee Titans
 * Dana Lyons – folk and alternative rock musician, author, environmentalist
 * Cuddles Marshall – major league baseball player for the New York Yankees and St. Louis Browns
 * Philip McCracken – artist, sculptor, activist
 * Jason McGerr – drummer for Death Cab for Cutie
 * Finn McKenty - (born in Bellingham) American Internet Personality, Music & Entertainment Journalist, Host of the Punk Rock MBA
 * Tommy Noonan – Actor. He played a wealthy fiancé of Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
 * Stephen Oswald – former pilot and NASA astronaut
 * Doug Pederson – head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League
 * Alfred Pettibone (1835–1914) – Washington state pioneer, one of the first residents of Bellingham
 * Jeff Ragsdale – author, activist, national game show champion
 * Taylor Rapp – NFL safety for the Buffalo Bills
 * Roger Repoz – major league baseball player
 * Charles Roehl (1857–1927) – Bellingham pioneer and businessman
 * William Roehl (1890–1968) – Bellingham pioneer and businessman
 * Jim Sterk - former athletic director for Missouri
 * Ryan Stiles – comedian on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, actor on The Drew Carey Show and Two and a Half Men
 * Ken Stringfellow – vocalist, guitarist, songwriter, founding member of the Posies
 * Hilary Swank – actress
 * Al Swift, former member of the United States House of Representatives who resided in Bellingham.
 * Phoebe Wahl – artist and author
 * Ben Weber – film and television actor
 * Christopher Wise – author

Sister cities
Bellingham maintains sister city relationships with five Pacific Rim port cities and Vaasa, Finland.

Tateyama and Port Stephens are also sister cities with each other.

Bellingham Sister Cities Association promotes Bellingham's sister city relationships. The relationship with Tateyama is the most active and includes regular events such as an annual city hall staff exchange and community cultural visits. Tateyama frequently fields a team for the annual Ski to Sea race, or at minimum has representation in the Ski to Sea parade.

title: Bellingham, Washington