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Creslow

Creslow (occasionally also known as Christlow) is a village and civil parish within Aylesbury Vale district in Buckinghamshire, England. It is close to Whitchurch, about six and a half miles from Aylesbury. It is in the civil parish of Witchurch.

The village name is Anglo Saxon in origin, Cærsehlaw, meaning 'cress hill'. It was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Cresselai.

In the Victorian era and much admired then, there was just one house left in the village, the manor house, which dated from the 14th century. It was then the property of Lord Clifford but has also now disappeared.

The church at Creslow, which dates from the 13th century, was formerly owned by the Knights Hospitaller (the Order of St John of Jerusalem). Following the dissolution of the Monasteries it was held by the Crown, and the whole of the manor was used as pasture for the cattle of the Royal Household. The ecclesiastical parish was abolished by Queen Elizabeth I and the building itself was demolished during the English Civil War, by the regicide Cornelius Holland, and was never replaced.

More recently Creslow was the site of a Foreign and Commonwealth Office/MI6 signals intelligence station, which was closed down in 1998 and, now in private hands, operates as a data processing facility and fibre optic hub under the name Creslow Park.

title: Creslow


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Dum Dums (lollipop)

Dum Dums (stylized as Dum•Dums) are an American brand of spherical lollipops.

History
Dum Dums originated from Akron Candy Company in Bellevue, Ohio, in 1924. I.C. Bahr, the early sales manager of the company, named them, thinking "Dum Dums" was a phrase any child could say. In 1953, Dum Dums were purchased by the Spangler Candy Company and moved manufacturing to Bryan, Ohio.

Initially, there were 7 flavors: lemon, lime, orange, coconut-pineapple, cherry, grape, and butterscotch.

Spangler once experimented with plastic sticks instead of the current paper sticks, but they were met with complaints of potential injury due to the possible breakage of the unbending plastic in manufacturing leading to plastic fragments in the candy.

Flavors
Dum Dums are now made in 16 flavors, with new flavors rotating into the mix every so often. The "Mystery Flavor" is the result of the end of one batch mixing with the next batch, rather than stopping production to clean machines in between flavors.

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

title: Dum Dums (lollipop)


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Good Bye, Lenin!

Good Bye, Lenin! is a 2003 German tragicomedy film, directed by Wolfgang Becker. The cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katrin Sass, Chulpan Khamatova, and Maria Simon. The story follows a family in East Germany (GDR); the mother (Sass) is dedicated to the socialist cause and falls into a coma in October 1989, shortly before the Peaceful Revolution in November. When she awakens eight months later in June 1990, her son (Brühl) attempts to protect her from a fatal shock by concealing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism in East Germany.

Most scenes were shot at the Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and around Plattenbauten near Alexanderplatz. Good Bye Lenin! received numerous honours, including 2003's European Film Award for Best Film and German Film Award for Best Fiction Film.

Plot
The film is set in East Berlin, in the period from October 1989 to a few days after German reunification in October 1990.

Alex Kerner lives with his mother Christiane, his sister Ariane, and Ariane’s infant daughter Paula. Alex's father purportedly abandoned the family for a mistress in the West in 1978. His mother joined the Socialist Unity Party and devotes her time to advocating for citizens. Alex is disgusted with the celebration of East Germany's 40th anniversary and participates in an anti-government demonstration. There he meets a girl, but they are separated by the Volkspolizei before they can introduce themselves.

Christiane, seeing Alex being arrested and beaten, suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma because nobody initially comes to her aid. Visiting his mother in hospital, Alex finds that her nurse, Lara, is the girl from the demonstration. She (an exchange student from the Soviet Union) and Alex begin dating shortly afterwards.

Erich Honecker resigns, Egon Krenz takes over, the borders are opened, the Berlin Wall falls, East Germany holds free elections, and capitalism comes to East Berlin. Alex begins working for a West German firm selling and installing satellite dishes. He befriends a Western colleague, aspiring filmmaker Denis Domaschke. Ariane's university closes and instead of studying economic theory, she now works at Burger King, and is dating its manager (Rainer, who moves into their apartment).

After eight months, Christiane awakens from her coma. Her doctor warns her family that she is still weak and any shock might cause another, possibly fatal, heart attack. Alex resolves to conceal the profound societal changes from her and maintain the illusion that the German Democratic Republic is just as it was before her coma. He, Ariane, and Lara retrieve their old East German furniture from storage, dress in their old clothes, and repackage new Western food in old East German jars. The deception is increasingly complicated as Christiane witnesses strange occurrences, such as a gigantic Coca-Cola banner on an adjacent building. Denis and Alex create fake news broadcasts from old East German news tapes to explain these odd events. Alex and Ariane fail to find where Christiane keeps her life savings (in East German marks) in time to exchange them for West German marks before the deadline.

Christiane gets stronger and one day wanders outside while Alex is asleep. She sees her neighbours' old East German furniture stacked in the street, new West German cars for sale, advertisements for Western corporations, and a statue of Lenin being flown away by helicopter. Alex and Ariane take her back home and show her a fake newscast explaining East Germany is now accepting refugees from the West following an economic crisis there.

At the family dacha Christiane reveals her own secret: her husband had fled not for a mistress but because of the difficulties he faced for refusing to join the ruling party. The plan had been for the rest of the family to join him. Christiane, fearing the government would take her children if things went wrong, decided to stay. Contrary to what she had told her children, their father wrote many letters that she hid. As she declares her wish to see her husband one last time to make amends, she relapses and is taken back to hospital.

Alex meets his father, Robert, who has remarried, has two children, and lives in West Berlin. He convinces him to see Christiane one last time. Under pressure to reveal the truth about the fall of the East, Alex creates a final fake news segment, persuading a taxi driver (who ambiguously either is or strongly resembles cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn, the first German in space and Alex's childhood hero) to act in the false news report as the new leader of East Germany and to give a speech about opening the borders to the West. However, unbeknownst to Alex, Lara had already recounted the true political developments to Christiane earlier that day.

Christiane dies two days later, outliving the German Democratic Republic by three days after German reunification. The family and friends scatter her ashes in the wind using a toy rocket Alex made with his father during childhood.

Development
For director Wolfgang Becker, work on Good Bye Lenin! began in the summer of 1999, but for screenwriter Bernd Lichtenberg, the work had already begun almost a decade earlier. Lichtenberg’s experience of the reunification period as a New West Berliner at a similar age to his protagonist Alex was formed into a story which already included many aspects of the later film, but first ended up "in the drawer" for a few years. He stated: “I had the feeling that it simply wasn’t the right time yet.” This only changed when he saw Becker's Life is All You Get (German: Das Leben ist eine Baustelle). Especially interested in the mix of sadness and comedy, which he himself also envisaged for his film, he believed he had found the right person to bring his idea to life. He was not mistaken. "All of a sudden there was this energy", recalls producer Stefan Arndt during the recording of the 5-page synopsis with Becker. “We knew we could tell the story in just the way we would like to.”

Nevertheless, it was not an easy process to finish the script. It supposedly took them six drafts plus a few interim versions to complete the script. Lichtenberg wrote the first drafts by himself. He stayed in close contact with Becker who voiced his criticism, especially of the characters. This was an important point for both of them so it was one they argued over as they both wanted to tell the story “through the characters”. The character that underwent the most radical change was Denis, as he was changed from a main character to a side character. The role of Denis, who was previously conceived as an young overweight boy from Turkey who was to be married off against his will, became an amateur film maker, who is as boldly-imaginative as he is practical. After completing the script, which the screenwriter and producer worked on together towards the end, their collaboration was not over. During the actual filming, Lichtenberg was involved whenever Becker wanted more changes.

Soundtrack
The film score was composed by Yann Tiersen, except the version of "Summer 78" sung by Claire Pichet. Stylistically, the music is very similar to Tiersen's earlier work on the soundtrack to Amélie. One piano composition, "Comptine d'un autre été : L'après-midi", is used in both films.

Several famous East German songs are featured. Two children, members of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation, sing "Unsere Heimat" ('Our Homeland'). Friends of Christiane's (living in the same building) follow with "Bau Auf! Bau Auf!" ('Build Up! Build Up!'), another anthem of the Free German Youth. The final fake newscast with Sigmund Jähn features a rousing rendition of the East German national anthem, "Auferstanden aus Ruinen".

Ostalgie
Alex creates fictional newscasts to reminisce about his earlier East German lifestyle as well as a Communist environment. He goes out of his way to use East German products to fool his mother such as Spreewald gherkins and although this is for his mother, there is also a hint he himself is creating a fantasy in which he would like to live. Alex lived his whole life with this barrier; therefore the drastic change is hard for him unlike his older sister Ariane. Ariane quickly adopts the new Western ideals and lifestyle, but Alex experiences nostalgia for their former way of life. Ostalgie is a neologism for Communist nostalgia, which is a common theme in Good Bye Lenin! Alex shows signs of ostalgie when he begins to increasingly criticise the Western changes in themselves.

Recently, German-American historian Andreas Daum has suggested a new interpretation, moving beyond the paradigm of ostalgie. He argues that Alex's efforts to present his mother with an alternate narrative of what happened during her coma are not meant to preserve a bygone state or falsify history. Instead, they use counterfactual history to cope with the unsettling experience of dramatic change. Alex's charades are conduits that allow all characters, including himself, to move from what they have been familiar with toward a new future. In this view, Good Bye Lenin! does not reflect a nostalgic attachment to the past, nor its retrospective idealization, but the film demonstrates a creative way of handling societal transformations, even beyond the specific East German setting.

Reception
The film received strongly positive reviews, and has a rating of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. Empire magazine gave the film four stars out of five, saying: "An ingenious little idea that is funny, moving and—gasp!—even makes you think." The magazine also ranked it 91st in "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010.

Good Bye Lenin! is frequently contrasted with The Lives of Others, which was released three years later, in 2006. Both films portray the legacy of East Germany, but with decidedly different tones.

Accolades
Good Bye Lenin! was submitted for consideration for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but not nominated.

Adaptation
An unofficial spiritual Indian remake of Good Bye, Lenin! was released 17 years later in the form of the Hindi-language comedy-drama Doordarshan, also referred to by its changed title Door Ke Darshan; written and directed by Gagan Puri, it explores a family's attempts to recreate a bygone era in order to prevent the family matron from suffering a shock when she recovers 30 years after having fallen into coma.

title: Good Bye, Lenin!


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Plessey

The Plessey Company plc was a British electronics, defence and telecommunications company. It originated in 1917, growing and diversifying into electronics. It expanded after World War II by acquisition of companies and formed overseas companies.

It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. In 1989, it was taken over by a consortium formed by GEC and Siemens which split the assets of the Plessey group.

The majority of Plessey's defence assets were amalgamated into BAE Systems in 1999 when British Aerospace merged with the defence arm of GEC, Marconi Electronic Systems (MES). The Plessey Microsystems division was the subject of a management buyout in 1988 becoming Radstone Technology, which survives today as part of Abaco Systems based in Towcester, Northamptonshire. The bulk of Plessey's telecommunications assets were acquired by Ericsson through its 2005 acquisition of Marconi Communications, a successor company of GEC.

Early history
The Plessey company was founded in 1917 in Marylebone, central London. The original shareholders were Thomas Hurst Hodgson, C. H. Whitaker, Raymond Parker and his brother Plessey Parker. A talented German engineer, William Oscar Heyne, was employed by the company. Heyne later became the managing director and chairman of Plessey and was one of the key figures in the development of Plessey during the 1920s and 1930s. The company moved to Cottenham Road in Ilford early in 1919. In 1925, the original company was wound up and a new one was formed with a greater share capital. Most of the early work carried out by the company was in mechanical engineering.

The Clark connection
An early customer of Plessey was a galvanising company called British Electro Chemists. One of that company's shareholders was Byron G. Clark, an American, who was also a business associate of T. H. Hodgson, one of the founders of Plessey. The Clark family would eventually dominate the management of Plessey for most of its history. Byron's son Allen George Clark joined the company in 1921, and went on to become a driving force behind the development of Plessey, followed later by his sons John Allen Clark, and Michael William Clark, both of whom rose to prominent positions in the company.

Electrical manufacturing
During the 1920s Plessey began to diversify into electrical manufacturing. Important contracts included the manufacture of early radios for Marconi and the production of telephones for the General Post Office. In order to increase production, Plessey moved to Vicarage Lane, Ilford, in 1923. In 1929, the television pioneer John Logie Baird had his first production televisions made by Plessey. The company also produced the first British-made portable radio in the same year.

The manufacture of electrical components became an area of growth for Plessey. A vast array of components was manufactured, many under licence from overseas companies. Plessey became one of the largest manufacturers in this field as the radio and television industries grew. In 1936/7, turnover was more than £1 million and Plessey became a public company on 17 March 1937.

Aircraft components
Aircraft components was another market into which the company diversified. In 1936, Plessey obtained a number of important manufacturing licences from American companies such as Breeze Corporation for aircraft multi-pin electrical connectors, Federal Laboratories for Coffman starters (an explosive cartridge device used to start aircraft engines), and Pump Engineering Services Corporation for the manufacture of Pesco fuel pumps. Plessey went on to produce large numbers of these fuel pumps for Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, and in 1940 the fuel pump for Britain's first jet engine was also supplied by Plessey.

World War II
During World War II, Plessey produced a vast array of components and equipment for the war effort, including shell cases, aircraft parts, and radio equipment such as the R1155 (receiver), and T1154 (transmitter). In all, 161,500 pieces of wartime electronic equipment were produced.

To allow greater production, Plessey converted five miles of twin tunnel, built for a new extension to the London Underground Central line from Leytonstone to Newbury Park, into a factory. The company also built a new factory at Swindon in Wiltshire, and opened several other shadow factories around the country to produce munitions. Caswell, Northamptonshire became the site of Plessey's first dedicated research centre in 1940. The wartime workforce of Plessey grew to over 10,000.

Post World War II
With the end of the war the company's orders dropped from £5 million in 1944/5 to £263,000 in 1946 and the workforce fell to less than 6,000. Radio and television sales were the main area of activity until the renewed demand for defence products with the onset of the Korean War. From a turnover of £5 million in 1949/50, there was an increase to £32 million in 1959/60.

In 1951, the Electronics Division was started by Michael Clark. By 1955, this had expanded to become the Electronics and Equipment Group with 5,000 staff. The following year the Roke Manor research facility was set up under the direction of H. J. Finden near Romsey, Hampshire. Plessey produced an early integrated circuit model in 1957, before the patents of Jack St. Clair Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild. In the 1960s the Group continued to expand, setting up facilities at places such as West Leigh (Havant, Hampshire) and Templecombe, Somerset. In 1961 Plessey merged with Ericsson Telephones and Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Company of Liverpool, to become Britain's largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, including the majority of the country's crossbar switches. Alongside the Telecommunications Division, three other businesses were set up: Plessey Avionics and Communications, Plessey Radar and Plessey Marine. In 1970, the Command and Control unit was set up at Christchurch, Dorset, which became the centre of the Plessey Defence Systems business. In 1979, a major subsidiary was set up, Plessey Electronic Systems, which incorporated the three businesses and by 1986 achieved sales of over £500 million and employed 15,000.

Plessey were partners in the development of the Atlas Computer in 1962 and in the development of digital telephone systems, including System X, from the late 1970s. In 1988, Plessey's Telecommunications Division merged with that of GEC to become GEC Plessey Telecommunications. Plessey Naval Systems was formed in 1986 by the merger of Plessey Marine with Plessey Displays, which had been part of Plessey Radar.

In 1967 or 1968, English Electric was subject to a takeover bid by Plessey, but chose instead to accept an offer from GEC.

Plessey were among the first firms to use computers. Their Training Department developed an interactive management game (PITDEX) using TeleType printer/keyboards to link to LEASCO computers in the United States via standard telephones and acoustic couplers.

Plessey also pioneered the gathering and consolidation of accounting information from around the world using in-house software. Each of their 140 management reporting entities used HP125s with DIVAT (data input, validation and transmission) software. Nearly 450 validation rules ensured accuracy within and between various reports. The data were then transmitted to Ilford where a HP 3000 ran Fortran software for consolidation and reporting—also on HP125s.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, Plessey manufactured a series of computer systems and peripherals compatible with Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-11. By 1972, Plessey designed the first industrial capability-based security computer, a fault-tolerant multiprocessor system called Plessey System 250. Plessey was also the lead contractor for the Ptarmigan communications system supplied to the British Army, which adopted the System 250 architecture.

UK air defence
In 1959 AT&E, later Plessey, became the prime contractor for a new UK air defence system, known by the company under the name Plan Ahead and, from 1961, as Project Linesman. To enable the system to be designed and built without too much information becoming public knowledge, a new factory called "Exchange Works" was built in Cheapside in Liverpool city centre, where young employees were granted exemption from conscription.

At the heart of the system, installed in a huge building in the middle of a council housing estate in West Drayton, was the computer room, occupying an area of around 300 x and filled with around 1,000 7 ft racks of electronics, including mainly the XL4 computer, based entirely on germanium transistors and using a computer language developed at Exchange Works in the 1950s and 1960s. The secure status of the factory attracted many other secret contracts and led to it becoming one of the major designers and manufacturers of cryptographic equipment. Exchange Works is now luxury flats.

South Africa
The South African roots of Plessey can be traced to the acquisition of AT&E and Ericsson in 1963, and a Cape Town based company, the Instrument Manufacturing Company (IMC), acquired in 1964.

At the time, IMC was in the process of industrialising a unique South African invention, the Tellurometer, the first successful microwave electronic distance measurement equipment. The instrument was invented by Dr. Trevor Lloyd Wadley of the Telecommunications Research Laboratory of the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), also responsible for the Wadley loop receiver, which allowed precision tuning over wide bands, a task that had previously required switching out multiple crystals.

South African insurance and investment company Sanlam bought 26% of Plessey South Africa in 1974, with first right of refusal to purchase more of the company. These shares were later transferred to Sankorp, Sanlam's industrial holdings company. In 1989, when GEC-Siemens took control of the Plessey Company, Sankorp indicated its intention to purchase the remaining 74% of shares in the South African subsidiary.

Australia
Plessey had a manufacturing plant in Sydney, Australia that made defense equipment and TVs.

GEC takeover bid
In December 1985, GEC launched a takeover bid for the Plessey Company, valuing the group at £1.2 billion. Both Plessey and the Ministry of Defence were against the merger, since GEC and Plessey were the two largest suppliers to the MoD and in many tenders the only competitors. In January 1986, the bid was referred to the Monopolies & Mergers Commission (MMC), whose report published in August advised against the merger. The government concurred and blocked GEC's bid.

In 1988, Plessey and GEC merged their telecom units to form GEC Plessey Telecommunications (GPT), at the time the UK's leading telecommunications manufacturer.

GEC Siemens takeover
In 1988, GEC and Siemens set up a joint holding company, GEC Siemens, to launch a hostile takeover of Plessey. Their initial offer was made on 23 December 1988, valuing Plessey at £1.7 billion. Again, Plessey rejected the offer and again it was referred to the MMC. The original proposal envisaged joint ownership of all of Plessey's defence businesses, with GPT and Plessey's North American businesses split in the ratios 60:40 and 51:49 respectively. The level of GEC's involvement in the Plessey defence businesses was not likely to meet with regulatory approval and in February 1989, GEC Siemens announced a new organisation. In an effort to head off the bid, Plessey announced in May 1989 the closure of its compound semiconductor business in Towcester, Plessey 3-5. The takeover was completed in September 1989.

Break-up of the business
In April 1990, GEC and Siemens agreed a new structure of ownership of the Plessey businesses:

GEC acquisitions

 * In the UK
 * Plessey Aerospace
 * Plessey Avionics
 * Plessey Crypto
 * Plessey Materials
 * Plessey Naval Systems
 * Plessey Semiconductors
 * Plessey Research Caswell
 * Plessey Microsystems
 * In North America
 * Plessey Aero Precision Corp
 * Plessey Dynamics Corp
 * Plessey Electronic Systems Corp (including ES Marine Systems)
 * Sippican
 * Plessey Materials
 * Leigh Instruments

Siemens acquisitions

 * Siemens Plessey Radar
 * Siemens Plessey Defence Systems
 * Siemens Plessey Controls
 * Siemens Plessey Australia
 * Siemens Plessey Assessment Services
 * Roke Manor Research

Jointly owned

 * GEC Plessey Telecommunications: 60% GEC and 40% Siemens

Disposals

 * Birkby Plastics (1989-1990)
 * Hoskyns Group
 * Plessey Valdarno S.p.A. (Italy), sold to Magnetek in 1991
 * 51% share in Plessey Telenet acquired by minority partner in 1992
 * 74% share in Plessey South Africa acquired by minority partner Sankorp

UK
In 1997, British Aerospace and DaimlerChrysler Aerospace acquired the UK operations and the German part of Siemens Plessey Systems, respectively.

By 1997, the GPT name disappeared in the UK and the company was known as Siemens GEC Communication Systems (SGCS), which later became Siemens Communications. In August 1998, GEC acquired Siemens' 40% stake in GPT (by now only existing as a legal entity) and merged GPT with the telecoms units of its other subsidiaries, namely Marconi SpA, GEC Hong Kong and ATC South Africa, to form Marconi Communications. In December 1999, GEC's defence arm Marconi Electronic Systems was amalgamated with British Aerospace to form BAE Systems.

The remainder of GEC was renamed to Marconi plc, and Marconi Communications became its principal subsidiary. This company was affected by the dot-com bubble and was restructured into Marconi Corporation in 2003, then collapsed in 2005. Most of it (including Marconi Communications) was bought by Ericsson and the remainder became Telent.

The part of GPT which evolved into Siemens Communications would eventually become Siemens Enterprise Communications in 2008. GEC Plessey Semiconductors (GPS) was purchased by Mitel Semiconductors of Canada in 1998. After a number of downsizes, including the purchase of the power semiconductor and silicon on sapphire operation at Lincoln, Lincolnshire by Dynex Semiconductor in 2000, the company renamed itself Zarlink Semiconductor in 2001. The GPS fabrication plant in Plymouth was acquired by Xfab.

Plessey Semiconductors Ltd
After the sale of the Roborough site in Plymouth to Xfab, the original Plessey Semiconductors site at Cheney Manor, Swindon continued to operate under the Zarlink Semiconductor name until it was sold to MHS Industries in early 2008. In February 2009, the UK business was forced into receivership following the collapse of the parent MHS Electronics business in France. After a subsequent management buyout the company traded as Plus-Semi Ltd. The Roborough site ( 8" and 6" lines) was re-acquired from Xfab on 1 January 2010 and the company renamed as Plessey Semiconductors Ltd. The new company transferred its bipolar processes on silicon and SOI into the 8" Plymouth facility during 2010, exploiting the combined technology base in the development of new processes and products in a number of markets. The Swindon site on the Cheney Manor Industrial estate in the west of the town was demolished in July 2012. In 2011/2, Plessey acquired the rights to disruptive GaN-on-silicon technology by acquisition of CamGaN, a startup company, from Cambridge Enterprises.

Using the GaN-on-silicon technology and semiconductor expertise, Plessey Semiconductors Ltd manufactured solid state lighting, horticultural lighting and medical sensing products. Their GaN-on-silicon i2LED high power LEDs and Stellar Orion Beam Forming modules, launched in autumn 2016, which enabled new form factors of lighting products and remove critical design constraints for lighting product designers. In horticulture, the Plessey Attis Growlight was at the forefront of an engineering approach to LED based plant grow lights which was then developed into a new brand, Hyperion Grow Lights. The company's medical products were based on the EPIC sensor, which were used in the advanced portable ECG monitoring device, Impulse, and was also the basis of an R&D program, named Warden, to develop driver alertness monitoring devices in automotive and aeronautical applications.

In 2017, Plessey pivoted the focus of the business to the R&D and manufacturing of microLEDs (micro light-emitting diodes) as a market disrupting display technology for a wide range of applications, including: Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, smartphones, televisions, smartwatches, head-up displays, head-mounted displays and more. Plessey continues to operate in the Roborough site with leading-edge 150mm and 200mm wafer processing facilities to undertake design, test and assembly of products, and a comprehensive suite of photonic characterisation and applications laboratories.

Their original microLED product was an illuminator for display light engines (DMD and LCOS), which offered a 40% reduction in light engine size whilst delivering higher energy efficiency. They have now upgraded to full-field emissive microLED displays that combine very high-density RGB pixel arrays with high-performance CMOS backplanes to produce very high-brightness, low-power and high-frame-rate image sources. These are innovative products that are widely recognised within the industry with many accolades from prestigious electronics, engineering and display industry award programs, including: Elektra Awards 2017, British Engineering Excellence Awards 2017, National Technology Awards 2018, CES Innovation Awards 2019 and Electronics Industry Awards 2019.

In March 2019, Plessey used their GaN-on-silicon technology, which natively emits blue, to innovatively engineer the early layers within the process to emit native green, opening more opportunities for markets such as military. Plessey also achieved the world's first GaN-on-silicon monolithic, wafer to wafer bonding, in May which was a massive breakthrough for not only the company but the industry.

South Africa
In South Africa, following the successful GEC/Siemens takeover, after protracted negotiations in 1991, Plessey South Africa became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sankorp under the new name of Plessey Tellumat South Africa Limited (PTSA). The addition of the name Tellumat had a double symbolism, firstly for the company's commitment to exports, as it is the name of its UK-based export subsidiary. Secondly, the name derives from the Tellurometer, South Africa's world first electronic surveying development—and by implication, a commitment to ongoing electronic research and development.

PTSA continued to grow with a strong focus on telecommunications and defence products, particularly with a major expansion into large projects, rolling out the microwave backbone of MTN, one of South Africa's first GSM cellular networks and the installation of a fibre optic network and radio broadcasting system in Malaysia. A software division was formed through the acquisition of BSW data, largely staffed by engineers from the recently terminated South African space programme in which PTSA had also participated, both in the electronics of the launch vehicle and the satellite itself.

1995 was a landmark year in the history of the business in South Africa. The merger of PTSA and Tek Electronics, the consumer electronics audio and video products, manufacturer and distributor, (also wholly owned by Sankorp) took the business full circle back to its consumer electronics roots. This resulted in the renaming of PTSA back to the original name of Plessey South Africa Limited. The full acquisition of AWA-Plessey Communications, which Plessey jointly owned in Australia with Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd (AWA) and had a similar product portfolio, resulted in penetration into the Pacific Rim market. The culmination of this growth was the company's listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) as the Plessey Corporation in the same year. Trading started off at R4.80 a share. On the evening of 6 February 1996, a devastating fire swept through two bays of the White Road factory in Retreat, Cape Town causing huge damage to stock, instruments, plant and work in progress. No one was injured, but work was disrupted for several weeks. Large sections of the factory had to be rebuilt.

At the end of 1996, Plessey Corporation sold off the Sales and marketing business of Telefunken, Pioneer and Satellite TV.

In August 1998, Plessey Corporation was bought by Dimension Data Holdings and Worldwide African Investment Holdings for R1.6 billion. The new owners retained BSW Data, Plessey Solutions and Communications Systems. The remaining divisions, notably with a product development and manufacturing focus, were bought back by a combined management buyout supported by Rand Merchant Bank. The corporate name was changed to Tellumat Pty Ltd. Tellumat continues to develop and manufacture Plessey-branded products as before and operates in the defence, telecommunications and contract manufacturing markets.

Plessey barcodes

The name is also used to refer to a barcode symbology developed by Plessey, which is still used in some libraries and for shelf tags in retail stores, in part as a solution to their internal requirement for stock control. The system was first used in the early 1970s by J.Sainsbury to identify all of its products on supermarket shelves for its product restocking system. The chief advantages are the relative ease of printing using the dot-matrix printers, which were popular at the time of the code's introduction, and its somewhat higher density than the more common 2 of 5 and 3 of 9 codes.

Plessey barcodes use two bar widths. Whitespace between bars is not significant. The start element is a wide bar, and the stop element is two narrow bars. In between, the bars are in groups of four. High order bars appear leftmost. Narrow bars are 0 and wide bars are 1.

This symbology is not self checking, though a modulo 10 or modulo 11 checksum (or some combination of both checksums, depending on application) is usually appended.

title: Plessey


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Cublington

Cublington is a village and one of 110 civil parishes within Aylesbury Vale district in Buckinghamshire, England. It is about seven miles (11 km) north of Aylesbury. The village name is Anglo Saxon in origin, and means "Cubbel's estate". In the Domesday Book of 1086 it was recorded as Coblincote.

History
The parish church of St Nicholas is built in the perpendicular style. The tower of the church is decorated with blank tracery windows. Inside, the chancel arch has unusual corbels of a man and a monkey. At one time there was also a Methodist Chapel in the village. 500 yards (500 m) from the church is a small man-made hill, about 20 ft. high, known as "The Beacon", it is in fact the motte of a small Norman castle.

North west of the church the 18th-century stable block of the former manor house survives. The building is made of brick, and a granary also survives built on an arcaded basement. This is rare as granaries in the area tended to be built on staddle stones. This type of agricultural building was generally raised from the ground to deter rodents.

Other houses of note include Old Manor Farm, a large low house with a recently created series of gardens; and opposite the church, the former rectory, dating from the 18th century with more recent additions, and an informal garden, open to the public once or twice a year. Neales Farm is an H plan half-timbered house dating from circa 1600.

The village has many old cottages, as well as small enclaves of newly built houses.

In 1971, the Report of the Roskill Commission on the London Airport expansion selected Cublington as the location of a proposed third airport for London on the basis of Cost Benefit Analysis. One Commission member, planner Colin Buchanan, produced a dissenting report rejecting the proposal to build on Cublington as "an environmental disaster." The government later rejected the Roskill recommendation on environmental grounds, in favour of a site at Maplin Sands, Foulness.

The village pub is called "The Unicorn".

In World War 2, the pub and village were popular destinations for personnel serving at nearby RAF Wing and the military hospital, built on the eastern edge of Cublington.

Cublington boasts two tennis courts, a trout and coarse fishing lake and a cricket club. The cricket club celebrated its 150th anniversary of the first recorded match in 2013. At senior level, the club runs 2 senior League teams on Saturdays as well as a Sunday side and an occasional Strollers Sunday side.

The nearest shop/post office and secondary school are 2.5 miles east of Cublington in the village of Wing, with Wingrave, also 2.5 miles away, offering a Church of England First and Middle school. The nearest doctor's surgery is in Wing.

There are regular bus services to Cublington from Aylesbury and Leighton Buzzard.

title: Cublington


text:
PLR

PLR may refer to:

Political parties

 * Partito liberale-radicale svizzero, Italian name for the Free Democratic Party of Switzerland
 * Partidul Liberal Reformator, Romanian title for the Liberal Reformist Party (Moldova)
 * Partidul Liberal Reformator, Romanian title for the Liberal Reformist Party (Romania)
 * Partido Liberal Radical or Radical Liberal Party (Paraguay)
 * PLR.Les Libéraux-Radicaux and PLR.I Liberali, French and Italian names respectively for FDP.The Liberals, a Swiss political party
 * Pour La Réunion, founded in 2012

Codes

 * ICAO airline designator for Northwestern Air
 * IATA code for St. Clair County Airport, Pell City, Alabama, United States
 * ISO 639-3 code for the Palaka language, spoken in Ivory Coast

Other uses

 * Parramatta Light Rail, a light rail line in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
 * Pupillary light reflex of the eye
 * Private letter ruling, US taxpayer guidance
 * Public Lending Right, author payments for library book loans
 * Pulse link repeater, a telecommunications device
 * Point of local repair of a network in MPLS local protection
 * Psycho+Logical-Records, an American record label
 * WPLR or 99.1 PLR, a radio station, New Haven, Connecticut, US

title: PLR


text:
Talk:Swabia (Bavaria)

Notable people: Please add Sebastian Kneipp Because he was born in Swabia and lived very long time in Bad Wörishofen a city of Swabia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:D5:EBC8:CF00:E18B:6CA1:E5D0:8D4D (talk) 20:11, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

This page ought to be a more general page about the German region of Swabia (much larger than the current Bavarian district, including much of present-day Baden-Württemberg), with the Bavarian district moved to Swabia (Bavarian district) or some such... I shall do this soon, if no objections... john 23:06, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I totally agree. This page is completely misleading. When I saw the map I was totally disorientated and it took me quite a time until I realized it referred to the Swabian part of Bavaria instead of the the constituent Swabe part of Baden-Württemberg which is not only much larger, as John correctly mentions but also by far more important politically, economically and seen from an administrative point of view. So please proceed - I might help you there. Jost ammon 18:29, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hi, I've moved this page to Swabia (administrative region), and started a new article on the historic region of Swabia at Swabia. Feel free to add to the new article. john 18:55, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Why only the eastern two-thirds of Baden-Württemberg? Maps of the medieval period that I have show at least the area from Basel to Strasburg on the right bank of the Rhine as part of Swabia, while the Imperial Circle of the early modern period certainly included all of (what was then) Baden. john '''k 03:48, 6 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Because nowaday swabia means that part of the former duchy of swabia which is inhabited by swabians. The other parts of the duchy (switzerland, alsace in france, vorarlberg in austria) are inhabited by other alemannics who do not speak swabian. You can see it here on the map. 7 Sept 2005 Nankea of the german wikipedia

I took out the part about Americans thinking Canadians are cheap. We make fun of them being obsessed with hockey, living in igloos, saying "eh" and so-forth. I have never once heard a fellow American call them overly frugal or cheap. But on the other hand, all Germans (even Schwabs themselves) will call Swabians cheapskates.Skeeter08865

Yes, and we swabians are really proud of being cheapskates! 7 Sept 2005 Nankea of the german wikipedia

It should be mentioned that the original Suabia (or Suebia, or Suavia) was at the territory of today's Slovakia and Moravia, from where Suebi migrates to the Swabia in 5 and 6 century. A. Surda

Stub
Marking this as a stub, since it really could use some fleshing out. uFu 07:32, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Dude, how are you gonna have an article on a geographic area and not include a map? jussayin

Bavarian Swabia
Has anybody given it some thought to rename this page Bavarian Swabia? The current title seems precise, but a little akward. Bavarian Swabia on the other hand would be a pretty literal translation of Bayerisch-Schwaben, which is what we Bayrische Schwaben commonly call it. Whats the general opinion? EA210269 (talk) 02:31, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

 * Quite right - now done. (The German article is called "Schwaben (Bayern)", which has the same reasoning behind it.) Howard Alexander (talk) 18:28, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Needs a map
I came here to see where Swabia fits into Germany. There should be a map showing all of Germany, with the Swabian region highlighted. MarkinBoston (talk) 00:10, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

title: Talk:Swabia (Bavaria)


text:
Cuddington, Buckinghamshire

Cuddington is a village and civil parish within the Buckinghamshire district in the ceremonial county of Buckinghamshire, England. It is near the Oxfordshire border, about six miles west of Aylesbury.

The village name is Old English (Anglo-Saxon) in origin, and means "Cudda's estate." In the Domesday Book of 1086 it was recorded as Cudintuna. Anciently the village was the location of a medicinal spring of great repute, though its exact location is unknown. The Church of St Nicholas dates from the 12th Century but was much restored in 1857. Across the road is Tyringham Hall that dates from the 17th Century. During the Second World War the King of Norway who was staying at the nearby Hartwell House attended a church service in the village.

Cuddington is centred on the village green and the road junction linking Aylesbury, Long Crendon and Haddenham. The majority of the original houses were built on the north side but in the last 50 years or so new homes have been built predominantly on the south side.

The current population is around 550 residents. Two of the most famous former residents were Jonathan and David Dimbleby.

The village, like surrounding villages, has been the location of several Midsomer Murders episodes.

Facilities in the village include:
 * Shop/post office
 * Hairdressing salon
 * Pub/Restaurant
 * 2 Churches (although one of these is rarely used)
 * Village Hall
 * Playing Field with Clubhouse, Tennis Courts, Children's Park and Cricket and Football pitches

For many years the village has won the regional heat of Britain's Best Kept Village Competition and also the Britain in Bloom competition.

Cuddington and Dinton Church of England School is a mixed Church of England primary school. It is a voluntary aided school, which takes children from the age of four through to the age of eleven. Cuddington was an infant school but has recently merged with Dinton School to form a full primary school on two sites. There are now just over one hundred pupils on roll.

Famous residents past and present

 * Richard Dimbleby - Broadcaster
 * David Dimbleby – Broadcaster
 * Jonathan Dimbleby – Broadcaster
 * John Holyman – 16th century Bishop of Bristol
 * Labi Siffre - Singer/ songwriter
 * Terry Lloyd - ITN News Journalist
 * Brendan Cole - dancer TV Entertainer

title: Cuddington, Buckinghamshire


text: User talk:82.38.44.65

title: User talk:82.38.44.65


text:
Talk:Cluj-Napoca Botanical Garden

Missing section
Isn't the map a copyright violation? Andy Mabbett 23:18, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I picked it up from the Romanian-language version of this article. (I've been translating Romanian-language articles.) Obviously, whoever posted it there already made the appropriate disclaimer on copyright. However, now that I look at the history of that page, I see that this issue is not new: at some point the page contained the following text at the top.

 * Am observat că textul acestui articol este preluat cuvânt cu cuvânt de pe acest site. La fel şi imaginea cu harta.

 * În josul paginii se vede că site-ul are copyright "© 1999 DNT Cluj". Deci acest material nu are ce căuta pe Wikipedia (cu excepţia cazului în care autorul materialului este cel care a făcut contribuţia pe Wikipedia şi acceptă condiţiile licenţei GFDL). --Mihai 11 Noi 2003 20:37 (UTC)

In English, that's
 * I've observed that the text in this article is taken word for word from this site. Same for the image and map.

 * At the bottom of that page you will see that the site is "© 1999 DNT Cluj". so this material is not what we are looking for in Wikipedia (unless the author of the material is the person who submitted it to Wikipedia and accepts the license conditions GFDL). --Mihai 11 Noi 2003 20:37 (UTC)

The Romanian-language article appears to be originally submitted by anonymous user 213.164.241.16. I see that after Mihai's comment, that same person (or one with the same IP address) went back in and made various edits to the article, presumably so that it wouldn't be word-for-word, then deleted Mihai's comment. There is no overt indication of permission being obtained. On the other hand, I imagine that the owner of the material is the Botanical Garden, and they are probably happy with the publicity. I suspect that the appropriate permission might be quite easy to obtain, but I doubt it's been done.

This would not be the first time I have run across copyright issues in the Romanian-language portion of the site. I check articles I find suspicious; this seemed to fit in with a lot of other articles about Cluj-Napoca, so I didn't check. Maybe they all have similar issues.

Andy, I will place a note on the appropriate discussion page and on your talk page referring to this page. If you want to pursue the matter further, feel free. I believe that all concerned have good English-language skills - certainly Mihai does - so you don't need to know Romanian to sort this out.

If you need anything else from me on this, just let me know. -- Jmabel 04:10, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * The problem is that the copyright owner of the site (DNT Cluj) is a local Internet provider. The copyright owner of the images is the Botanical Garden however, I remember having discussed this issue as well at some point in time, because the person who posted it said the exact same images were shown on the Botanical Garden's brochure. The text on the site seems to also come from their brochue. Unfortunately the Botanical Garden itself doesn't seem to have a site of their own, so we can't contact them directly. The next best thing would be to contact the Cluj Napoca Town Hall, but I doubt that would really make any difference, it's extremely unlikely the Town Hall will actually contact the Botanical Garden and ask for copyright permission on our behalf.

 * So I say dump it. It's a pity, I'm convinced the Botanical Garden wouldn't mind (that's why I left it on the Romanian Wikipedia), but since we can't contact them... well, better safe than sorry. I'll follow up what's happening on this page, and will make sure to delete it from the Romanian Wikipedia as well if you concur. Just to make sure, if it gets deleted from here, please also post a note on my talk page on the Romanian Wikipedia. Thank you! --Gutza 09:39, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Actually, under those circumstances, I say don't dump it. DNT Cluj has obviously had this content posted for four years without objection from the originator of the images, etc. I think we can reasonably presume that the Botanical Garden administration are aware of that and have not objected. I think the discussion here is clear evidence of our good faith and of our understanding (which anyone who wants to reuse this under GFDL should take into account) that there might be a copyright issue with the reuse of these images in a manner the originator would not like. My gut is to simply say that we will, of course, remove these images if any representative of the Botanical Garden asks us to, but that for the moment we are presuming implicit permission, in that they seem not to have objected to similar use in the past. Any other thoughts? Jmabel 19:07, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

 * Hello! It's me who posted the article last year on the romanian wikipedia. All the information in it it is pure of 'general culture', anyone that visited it once can know this data. It is not that hard. I visited it since I was in kindergarden, so I don't think we should make a matter for this. The text was completly modified, but I could not extract the information included on their site, and include only other information because then we would not have an article. The map is in public domain, there should be no problem in using it, that's why it was created. On the brochure there is no copyright warning, on the website, we have only the copyright of the webmaster (so the way how it looks, but not what it has in it). --Danutz

 * BTW, I want to know what other articles thinks Jambel to have been copied form protected sources. --Danutz

 * Just noticed that the Hungarian Wikipedia page for the Cluj Botanical Gardens has the founder down as Alader Richter, witha citation. There are documents and pictures of a botanical gardens on the site before World War One and the transfer of Cluj to the kingdom of Romania. I didn't want to leap in and edit the site before checking first though. Don't want to rain on anyone's parade! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Toroboro (talk • contribs)
 * It is not a complete presentation. The first predecessor of the garden was the Cluj University, in sense they had a small garden. In time the garden was transformed, but the garden didn't developed much, to a real botanical garden. The reasons were mainly the lack of money for developing and WWI. Richter tried to develop the garden and made efforts more intense that his predecessors, but because of WWI he had no success. Borza succeed to create the first time a botanical garden in Cluj. On the Romanian Wikipedia you can read a complete presentation.--Roamataa 08:02, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The pictures are after WWI.--Roamataa 08:03, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I've translated the "Generalități" section from the Romanian Wikipedia article. Will continue to add other sections in the near future. Nimirea (talk) 17:47, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

title: Talk:Cluj-Napoca Botanical Garden


text:
Jordi Pujol

Jordi Pujol i Soley (, born 9 June 1930) is a retired Catalan politician who was the leader of the party Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC) from 1974 to 2003, and President of the Generalitat de Catalunya from 1980 to 2003.

Early life
Pujol was born in Barcelona, studied at the German School of Barcelona and received a medical degree from the University of Barcelona. During his college years, he joined different activist groups that were seeking to rebuild the ideal Catalonia that the Spanish Civil War and Franco's dictatorship had undermined. Among these organizations were Grup Torras i Bages (where he met other activists such as Jaume Carner or Joan Reventós), Comissió Abat Oliva, Grup Pere Figuera or Cofradia de la Mare de Déu de Montserrat de Virtèlia.

In 1960, in the course of an homage to Catalan poet Joan Maragall, held in Palau de la Música Catalana, part of the audience sang the Cant de la Senyera (The Song of the Flag in English) despite being previously prohibited by the Spanish authorities. Pujol was among those who organized this protest, and he was captured and detained for his protests against the regime of Francisco Franco.

Invention of Neobacitrin ointment
As a physician, Pujol was inventor of the antibiotic ointment Neobacitrin while working in the family-run laboratory Fides Cuatrecasas. The ointment went on to achieve great success and is still used today.

Political career and President of Catalonia
In 1974, Pujol founded the political party called Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC) (Democratic Convergence of Catalonia in English), of which he was the first Secretary. The political party was not legalized until 1977, during the Spanish transition to democracy after Franco's death in November 1975.

From 1977 to 1980, Pujol was Minister without portfolio in the Provisional government of Catalonia, presided by Josep Tarradellas. In 1977 he led Pacte Democràtic per Catalunya, a coalition of Catalan parties that were trying to approve the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia. In the Spanish general election of 1977 he was elected to the Spanish Congress of Deputies, representing Barcelona. Pujol was re-elected at the 1979 General Election but resigned from the parliament in 1980.

On 20 March 1980, the first Parliament of Catalonia elections after Franco's regime were held. The Catalan nationalist party Convergència i Unió (coalition of CDC and Democratic Union of Catalonia) won the elections and Pujol was elected President of the Generalitat de Catalunya on 24 April 1980. He was reelected in 1984, 1988, 1992, 1995 and 1999.

Pujol is a supporter of European integration. In 1985, he started a collaboration with Edgar Faure in the Council of the Regions of Europe (CRE), which would later become the Assembly of European Regions (AER). Pujol was the President of the Assembly of European Regions from 1992 to 1996. In 1996, he was made an officer of the National Order of Quebec for strengthening ties between Quebec and Catalonia.

Pujol retired in 2003. He left leadership of the party (CDC) to Artur Mas. That year, he gave the Biblioteca de Catalunya a bibliographic collection of more than 16,000 documents from his presidency.

Pujol and Catalan nationalism
During the last decades of the Franco regime and his 23 years as President of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Pujol leant towards the majority tendency in Catalan nationalism, which, instead of seeking a fully independent republic, intended to work towards a federalized Spain that would, according to Pujol, recognize Catalonia "as a country, as a collective with its own personality and differences," and a "guarantee that her own identity be respected". With the conservative People's Party opposing the Catalan Statute of Autonomy, however, as well as the recognition for the language in the east of Aragon, Pujol has stated that, at least shortly before the Spanish transition to democracy, "there is more aggression towards Catalonia than ever", and that Catalans can "no longer hope for anything from the Spanish state".

A lifelong federalist, Pujol has recently become very disenfranchised by the Spanish political arena. He also has recently stated, regarding the recent surge of Catalan separatism that more people than ever want independence, "and they have the right to want it."

Personal life
He married Marta Ferrusola in Santa Maria de Montserrat in 1956. The couple had seven children. During COVID-19 pandemic in Spain, on 15 January 2021 Pujol and his wife Marta tested positive for COVID-19 and, without serious symptoms, they were confined to their home in Barcelona. Marta died on 8 July 2024 at the age of 89 after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for six years.

Corruption scandals
In July 2014, Jordi Pujol released a note explaining that for 34 years, including 23 as the President of Catalonia, he had maintained secret foreign bank accounts inherited from his father. The note apologized for his actions and explained that the millions had been declared and taxes paid. The scandal erupted in the Spanish media as it involves allegations against many family members, including trafficking of influence, bribery, money laundering and public corruption. At this time, his sons Jordi and Oleguer Pujol Ferrusola are being investigated by tax authorities. Another son Oriol Pujol resigned from his leadership position in CiU earlier in the month to face charges of public corruption as well. As a direct result of Pujol's admission on 29 July, Judge Pablo Ruz issued an indictment against Jordi Pujol Ferrusola and his wife for money laundering and tax evasion.

On 29 July Catalan president Artur Mas, after a meeting with Pujol, announced that Pujol renounced both his salary and the office that he had been assigned as ex-president, as well as the honorary title of founding chairman of CDC and CiU. The opposition parties from both left and right, nationalist and non-nationalist, have demanded he testify before the parliament. The main government allies in the Catalan parliament, Esquerra Republicana, have declared that they support stripping Pujol of all his honors. The Catalan government has declared this a "private matter" that will have no impact on the movement for Catalan independence and the referendum scheduled for 9 November 2014. In announcing his resignation from all party offices, President Mas initially stated that Pujol would keep the right to be called "The Right Honorable" as a former president of Catalonia. Hours later the party spokesperson Francesc Homs stated that Pujol must "forfeit everything," including the Medalla de Oro of Catalunya and all honorifics previously awarded to him. Indicative of the conflicted reaction of many Catalan nationalists, his personal friend Xavier Trias, the Mayor of Barcelona, lamented on Catalonia Radio "He must disappear...He failed us. It is a disaster that has taken place and the shadowy times of Pujol are finished while a new era begins." Perhaps no one is more deeply conflicted than current President Mas who has acknowledged that Pujol is his "political father" and has stated that "he does not know the details and he is not interested in them either." The impact of the Pujol family scandals on the Catalan independence movement, the CIU party and Mas' political future remain to be seen.

Pujol and his family have been suspected for many years of cashing in on the political power he amassed as a 23-year president of Catalonia. In 1984 his family's bank went bankrupt and was taken over by the Spanish government. His children have amassed a fortune in private businesses that frequently did business and received contracts from the Catalan government. Pujol's wife and children have investments in the tens of millions of dollars in Mexico, Panama and Argentina. Financial records show the movement of money between foreign banks in Andorra, Switzerland, Jersey, Cayman Islands and other tax havens in excess of €100 million. Critics, including Jordi Pujol Ferrusola's former girlfriend, charge that this family wealth could not be accumulated from a family inheritance or successful business practices. Ever since the 1984 bankruptcy of Banca Catalana, as well as in subsequent years, whenever corruption allegations were made against Pujol, his supporters claimed that the charges were politically motivated against Catalonia.

The matter is still under investigation in 2017.

Impact
In early September 2014, public opinion polls began to show a measurable impact of the Pujol scandals on Catalan politics and public opinion. According to a poll conducted by El Periódico, a Catalan newspaper, 55% of Catalan voters believe the scandals will negatively affect the "right to decide" on November 9. El País, a Madrid newspaper, likewise found in its polling that 54% of Catalans believe that the corruption scandals are having a negative effect on the independence movement. In addition, over 78% of those Catalans polled by El Periódico believed that the Pujol family had collected illegal payments for government contracts habitually. In anticipation of the 11 September national holiday, the Diada, as well as the planned November 9 vote, the political strategies of the major parties are in flux. Pujol's old party has moved to a position of both welcoming (and limiting) his testimony in the Catalan parliament and reasserting that the critics are seeking political advantage from the investigations. Through its public statements the party is trying to remain optimistic about holding the vote while at the same time recognizing that the planned consultation may be deemed unconstitutional by Spain's Constitutional court. While the difficulty of maintaining the sovereignty alliance, and the competing demands of legality and democracy, is undeniably challenging for President Mas, his political decision-making has become increasingly difficult due to the Pujol scandals.

On 5 September 2014 The Jordi Pujol Center for Studies announced its closing. The center had been the major focus of Pujol's work in retirement sponsoring different academic activities related to ethics and disseminating his political philosophy. The Catalan government and many private sources of income ended their affiliations and it was decided that it was no longer a viable entity in light of the scandals.

title: Jordi Pujol


text:
GeForce 4 series

The GeForce 4 series (codenames below) refers to the fourth generation of Nvidia's GeForce line of graphics processing units (GPUs). There are two different GeForce4 families, the high-performance Ti family, and the budget MX family. The MX family spawned a mostly identical GeForce4 Go (NV17M) family for the laptop market. All three families were announced in early 2002; members within each family were differentiated by core and memory clock speeds. In late 2002, there was an attempt to form a fourth family, also for the laptop market, the only member of it being the GeForce4 4200 Go (NV28M) which was derived from the Ti line.

Architecture
The GeForce4 Ti (NV25) was launched in February 2002 and was a revision of the GeForce 3 (NV20). It was very similar to its predecessor; the main differences were higher core and memory clock rates, a revised memory controller (known as Lightspeed Memory Architecture II), updated pixel shaders with new instructions for Direct3D 8.0a support, an additional vertex shader (the vertex and pixel shaders were now known as nFinite FX Engine II), hardware anti-aliasing (Accuview AA), and DVD playback. Legacy Direct3D 7-class fixed-function T&L was now implemented as vertex shaders. Proper dual-monitor support (TwinView) was also brought over from the GeForce 2 MX. The GeForce 4 Ti was superior to the GeForce 4 MX in virtually every aspect save for production cost, although the MX had the Nvidia VPE (video processing engine) which the Ti lacked.

Lineup
The initial two models were the Ti4400 and the top-of-the-range Ti4600. At the time of their introduction, Nvidia's main products were the entry-level GeForce 2 MX, the midrange GeForce4 MX models (released the same time as the Ti4400 and Ti4600), and the older but still high-performance GeForce 3 (demoted to the upper mid-range or performance niche). However, ATI's Radeon 8500LE was somewhat cheaper than the Ti4400, and outperformed its price competitors, the GeForce 3 Ti200 and GeForce4 MX 460. The GeForce 3 Ti500 filled the performance gap between the Ti200 and the Ti4400 but it could not be produced cheap enough to compete with the Radeon 8500.

In consequence, Nvidia rolled out a slightly cheaper model: the Ti4200. Although the 4200 was initially supposed to be part of the launch of the GeForce4 line, Nvidia had delayed its release to sell off the soon-to-be discontinued GeForce 3 chips. In an attempt to prevent the Ti4200 damaging the Ti4400's sales, Nvidia set the Ti4200's memory speed at 222 MHz on the models with a 128 MiB frame buffer—a full 53 MHz slower than the Ti4400 (all of which had 128 MiB frame buffers). Models with a 64 MiB frame buffer were set to 250 MHz memory speed. This tactic didn't work however, for two reasons. Firstly, the Ti4400 was perceived as being not good enough for those who wanted top performance (who preferred the Ti4600), nor those who wanted good value for money (who typically chose the Ti4200), causing the Ti4400 to be regarded as a pointless middle ground of the two. Furthermore, some graphics card makers simply ignored Nvidia's guidelines for the Ti4200, and set the memory speed at 250 MHz on the 128 MiB models anyway.

Then in late 2002, the NV25 core was replaced by the NV28 core, which differed only by addition of AGP-8X support. The Ti4200 with AGP-8X support was based on this chip, and sold as the Ti4200-8X. A Ti4800SE replaced the Ti4400 and a Ti4800 replaced the Ti4600 respectively when the 8X AGP NV28 core was introduced on these.

The only mobile derivative of the Ti series was the GeForce4 4200 Go (NV28M), launched in late 2002. The solution featured the same feature-set and similar performance compared to the NV28-based Ti4200, although the mobile variant was clocked lower. It outperformed the Mobility Radeon 9000 by a large margin, as well as being Nvidia's first DirectX 8 laptop graphics solution. However, because the GPU was not designed for the mobile space, it had thermal output similar to the desktop part. The 4200 Go also lacked power-saving circuitry like the MX-based GeForce4 4x0 Go series or the Mobility Radeon 9000. This caused problems for notebook manufacturers, especially with regards to battery life.

Performance
The GeForce4 Ti outperformed the older GeForce 3 by a significant margin. The competing ATI Radeon 8500 was generally faster than the GeForce 3 line, but was overshadowed by the GeForce 4 Ti in every area other than price and more advanced pixel shader (1.4) support. Nvidia, however, missed a chance to dominate the upper-range/performance segment by delaying the release of the Ti4200 and by not rolling out 128 MiB models quickly enough; otherwise the Ti4200 was cheaper and faster than the previous top-line GeForce 3 and Radeon 8500. Besides the late introduction of the Ti4200, the limited release 128 MiB models of the GeForce 3 Ti200 proved unimpressive, letting the Radeon 8500LE and even the full 8500 dominated the upper-range performance for a while. The Matrox Parhelia, despite having several DirectX 9.0 capabilities and other innovative features, was at most competitive with the GeForce 3 and GeForce 4 Ti 4200, but it was priced the same as the Ti 4600 at US$399.

The GeForce 4 Ti4200 enjoyed considerable longevity compared to its higher-clocked peers. At half the cost of the 4600, the 4200 remained the best balance between price and performance until the launch of the ATI Radeon 9500 Pro at the end of 2002. The Ti4200 still managed to hold its own against several next generation DirectX 9 chips released in late 2003, outperforming the GeForce FX 5200 and the midrange FX 5600, and performing similarly to the mid-range Radeon 9600 Pro in some situations.

Architecture

Though its lineage was of the past-generation GeForce2, the GeForce4 MX did incorporate bandwidth and fill rate-saving techniques, dual-monitor support, and a multi-sampling anti-aliasing unit from the Ti series; the improved 128-bit DDR memory controller was crucial to solving the bandwidth limitations that plagued the GeForce 256 and GeForce2 lines. It also owed some of its design heritage to Nvidia's high-end CAD products, and in performance-critical non-game applications it was remarkably effective. The most notable example is AutoCAD, in which the GeForce4 MX returned results within a single-digit percentage of GeForce4 Ti cards several times the price.

Many criticized the GeForce4 MX name as a misleading marketing ploy since it was less advanced than the preceding GeForce3. In the features comparison chart between the Ti and MX lines, it showed that the only "feature" that was missing on the MX was the nfiniteFX II engine—the DirectX 8 programmable vertex and pixel shaders. However, the GeForce4 MX was not a GeForce4 Ti with the shader hardware removed, as the MX's performance in games that did not use shaders was considerably behind the GeForce4 Ti and GeForce3.

Despite harsh criticism by gaming enthusiasts, the GeForce4 MX was a market success. Priced about 30% above the GeForce2 MX, it provided better performance, the ability to play a number of popular games that the GeForce2 could not run well—above all else—to the average non-specialist it sounded as if it were a "real" GeForce4—i.e., a GeForce4 Ti. The GeForce4 MX was particularly successful in the PC OEM market, and rapidly replaced the GeForce2 MX as the best-selling GPU.

In motion-video applications, the GeForce4 MX offered new functionality. It (and not the GeForce4 Ti) was the first GeForce member to feature the Nvidia VPE (video processing engine). It was also the first GeForce to offer hardware-iDCT and VLC (variable length code) decoding, making VPE a major upgrade from Nvidia's previous HDVP. In the application of MPEG-2 playback, VPE could finally compete head-to-head with ATI's video engine.

Lineup
There were 3 initial models: the MX420, the MX440 and the MX460. The MX420 had only Single Data Rate (SDR) memory and was designed for very low end PCs, replacing the GeForce2 MX100 and MX200. The GeForce4 MX440 was a mass-market OEM solution, replacing the GeForce2 MX/MX400 and GeForce2 Ti. The GeForce4 MX460 was initially meant to slot in between the MX440 and the Ti4400, but the late addition of the Ti4200 to the line at a very similar price point (combined with the existing GeForce3 Ti200 and ATI's Radeon 8500LE/9100, which were also similarly priced) prevented the MX460 from ever being truly competitive, and the model soon faded away.

In terms of 3D performance, the MX420 performed only slightly better than the GeForce2 MX400 and below the GeForce2 GTS. However, this was never really much of a problem, considering its target audience. The nearest thing to a direct competitor the MX420 had was ATI's Radeon 7000. In practice its main competitors were chipset-integrated graphics solutions, such as Intel's 845G and Nvidia's own nForce 2, but its main advantage over those was multiple-monitor support; Intel's solutions did not have this at all, and the nForce 2's multi-monitor support was much inferior to what the MX series offered.

The MX440 performed reasonably well for its intended audience, outperforming its closest competitor, the ATI Radeon 7500, as well as the discontinued GeForce2 Ti and Ultra. When ATI launched its Radeon 9000 Pro in September 2002, it performed about the same as the MX440, but had crucial advantages with better single-texturing performance and proper support of DirectX 8 shaders. However, the 9000 was unable to break the MX440's entrenched hold on the OEM market. Nvidia's eventual answer to the Radeon 9000 was the GeForce FX 5200, but despite the 5200's DirectX 9 features it did not have a significant performance increase compared to the MX440 even in DirectX 7.0 games. This kept the MX440 in production while the 5200 was discontinued.

The GeForce4 Go was derived from the MX line and it was announced along with the rest of the GeForce4 lineup in early 2002. There was the 420 Go, 440 Go, and 460 Go. However, ATI had beaten them to the market with the similarly performing Mobility Radeon 7500, and later the DirectX 8.0 compliant Mobility Radeon 9000. (Despite its name, the short-lived 4200 Go is not part of this lineup, it was instead derived from the Ti line.)

Like the Ti series, the MX was also updated in late 2002 to support AGP-8X with the NV18 core. The two new models were the MX440-8X, which was clocked slightly faster than the original MX440, and the MX440SE, which had a narrower memory bus, and was intended as a replacement of sorts for the MX420. The MX460, which had been discontinued by this point, was never replaced. Another variant followed in late 2003—the MX 4000, which was a GeForce4 MX440SE with a slightly higher memory clock.

The GeForce4 MX line received a third and final update in 2004, with the PCX 4300, which was functionally equivalent to the MX 4000 but with support for PCI Express. In spite of its new codename (NV19), the PCX 4300 was in fact simply an NV18 core with a BR02 chip bridging the NV18's native AGP interface with the PCI-Express bus.

GeForce4 Go driver support
This family is a derivative of the GeForce4 MX family, produced for the laptop market. The GeForce4 Go family, performance wise, can be considered comparable to the MX line.

One possible solution to the lack of driver support for the Go family is the third party Omega Drivers. Using third party drivers can, among other things, invalidate warranties. The Omega Drivers are supported by neither laptop manufacturers, laptop ODMs, nor by Nvidia. Nvidia attempted legal action against a version of Omega Drivers that included the Nvidia logo.

Discontinued support
Nvidia has ceased driver support for GeForce 4 series.

Final drivers

 * Windows 9x & Windows Me: 81.98 released on December 21, 2005; Download;
 * Product Support List Windows 95/98/Me – 81.98.

 * Windows 2000, 32-bit Windows XP, 64-bit Windows XP & Media Center Edition: 93.71 released on November 2, 2006; Download.
 * Windows 2000, 32-bit Windows XP, 64-bit Windows XP & Media Center Edition: 93.81 (beta) released on November 28, 2006; Download.

The drivers for Windows 2000/XP may be installed on later versions of Windows such as Windows Vista and 7; however, they do not support desktop compositing or the Aero effects of these operating systems.

 * (Products supported list also on this page)

Windows 95/98/Me Driver Archive

Windows XP/2000 Driver Archive Unix Driver Archive
 * Linux/BSD/Solaris: 96.43.xx

title: GeForce 4 series