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Interactive storytelling

Interactive storytelling (also known as interactive drama) is a form of digital entertainment in which the storyline is not predetermined. The author creates the setting, characters, and situation which the narrative must address, but the user (also reader or player) experiences a unique story based on their interactions with the story world. The architecture of an interactive storytelling program includes a drama manager, user model, and agent model to control, respectively, aspects of narrative production, player uniqueness, and character knowledge and behavior. Together, these systems generate characters that act "human," alter the world in real-time reactions to the player, and ensure that new narrative events unfold comprehensibly.

The field of study surrounding interactive storytelling encompasses many disparate fields, including psychology, sociology, cognitive science, linguistics, natural language processing, user interface design, computer science, and emergent intelligence. They fall under the umbrella term of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), at the intersection of hard science and the humanities. The difficulty of producing an effective interactive storytelling system is attributed to the ideological division between professionals in each field: artists have trouble constraining themselves to logical and linear systems and programmers are disinclined to appreciate or incorporate the abstract and unproven concepts of the humanities.

Definition
What characteristics distinguish an interactive story from another form of interactive media is subject to much debate. Interactivity and storytelling are both polysemic terms, and the phrase "interactive storytelling" does not inherently distinguish it from other kinds of storytelling, many of which are already interactive to some extent. Some of the literature associated with the term "interactive storytelling" is actually about transmedia storytelling, which is not a form of entertainment, but a marketing strategy for building a compelling brand across digital platforms. Varying levels of interactivity are a function of the "relatedness of transmitted messages with previous exchanges of information where sender and receiver roles become interchangeable." Storytelling, in this case, refers to the process of active creation and authoring rather than the final product and its passive reception. Interactive storytelling by this definition can entail any media that allows the user to generate several unique dramatic narratives. Though its final goal is a fully unauthored AI environment with a comprehensive human-level understanding of narrative construction (e.g., the Holodeck), projects that use branching stories and variable gates are considered experimental prototypes in the same genre.

Interactive storytelling is defined as distinct from interactive fiction (or IF), as well as video games with strong narrative focus (Mass Effect, BioShock, etc.), by user agency and open-ended narrative. David Gaider, an RPG developer at BioWare, stated that "every possible branch needs to be written and fully realized, even if not every player sees it, and thus any game which allows for a lot of player choice becomes a much more expensive proposition for a developer." IF and video games, to balance user choice with authorial effort, must constrain the directions the narrative can take with puzzles, battles, or unchangeable plot points and bottlenecks, all of which detract from a sense of immersion. Only the most critical of the user's narrative choices are used or remembered in narrative development, according to the need to fulfill specific player goals that define a "gameplay" experience. A true IS system would incorporate all of them, as do living human agents, simultaneously and continuously - a task only artificial intelligence can meet. Sandbox games like The Sims and Spore, which do involve extensive AI-based social interaction, do not manage dramatic tension or produce a cohesive narrative.

To Mateas and Stern, creators of Façade and The Party, interactive storytelling is best understood as interactive theater, in that its goal is dramatic meaning rather than fun. It was Chris Crawford who coined the term interactive storytelling in the 1990s, arguing that IS is not a video game with a narrative, and that a game and IS cannot be combined successfully. Because of limited technology and the amount of work required, it is still difficult to combine a robust interactive storytelling system and a game engine without detracting from the effectiveness of both.

Emerging voices in the field, however, argue for the possibilities of adding narrative complexity and realistic characters to existing video game genres. Using MADE (Massive Artificial Drama Engine), a team of AI researchers developed a genetic algorithm to guide emergent behavior for secondary non-player characters (NPCs) based on literary archetypes. In the AI engine of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, this was tested to elaborate on the mechanistic behavior of townspeople: "...hungry inhabitants could become thieves, guards could pursue the thieves, villagers could fall in love with others, or different war alliances could emerge."

History
Early attempts to understand interactive storytelling date back to the 1970s with such efforts as Roger Schank's research at Northwestern University and the experimental program TaleSpin. In the early 1980s Michael Liebowitz developed "Universe", a conceptual system for a kind of interactive storytelling. In 1986, Brenda Laurel published her PhD dissertation, "Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System."

During the 1990s, a number of research projects began to appear, such as the Oz Project led by Dr. Joseph Bates and Carnegie Mellon University, the Software Agents group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Improv Project led by Ken Perlin at New York University, and the Virtual Theater group at Stanford, led by Barbara Hayes-Roth.

There were also a number of conferences touching upon these subjects, such as the Workshop on Interactive Fiction & Synthetic Realities in 1990; Interactive Story Systems: Plot & Character at Stanford in 1995; the AAAI Workshop on AI and Entertainment, 1996; Lifelike Computer Characters, Snowbird, Utah, October 1996; the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents at Marina del Rey, CA. February 5–8, 1997.

The first conference to directly address the research area was the 1st International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, which took place in March 2003 and focused specifically on concepts and first prototypes for automated storytelling and autonomous characters, including modeling of emotions and the user experience. The concepts were developed by Chris Crawford, in his 2005 book.

In the 2000s, work on interactive storytelling and related topics expanded, and was presented at events including the alternating bi-yearly conferences, TIDSE (Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment) and ICVS (International Conference on Virtual Storytelling), hosted in Germany and France, respectively. TIDSE and ICVS were superseded by ICIDS (International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling), a yearly event established in 2008.

The first published interactive storytelling software that was widely recognized as the "real thing" was Façade, created by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. The system was publicly released in 2006, and was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Slamdance Independent Games Festival.

Strategies
The architecture of an interactive storytelling system has three component parts: a drama manager, a user model, and an agent model. The drama manager is responsible for guiding the narrative by searching and executing story "beats" in a coherent sequence, refining story events by providing new information and reconciling contradictory plots, and collaborating with the agent model to choose the best narrative actions for the characters. It monitors a number of overview variables in the storyworld to make the best decision for the narrative, defined by the goals of the author: a measure of worldwide conflict would help to increase or decrease dramatic tension, while measures of relationships and likability could guide a story towards a romantic storyline. The agent model collects information about the story world and characters and generates possible actions in response for each non-player character in the story. Possible actions are drawn from the personality and emotional model of the character, allowing each one to exhibit autonomous behavior with intelligent dramatic goals. Finally, the user model keeps track of player choices and inputs, such that the drama manager and agent model can cooperate with the way the user attempts to play rather than challenging or misunderstanding their decisions.

Crawford discusses three potential strategies for developing interactive storytelling systems. Firstly, environmental approaches are those which take an interactive system, such as a computer game, and encourage the actions of a user in such a way as to form a coherent plot. With a sufficiently complex system, emergent behavior may form story-like behavior regardless of the user's actions.

Secondly, data-driven strategies have a library of "story components" which are sufficiently general that they can be combined smoothly in response to a user's actions (or lack thereof). This approach has the advantage of being more general that the directed environmental approach, at the cost of a much larger initial investment.

Finally, language-based approaches require that the user and system share some, very limited, domain-specific language so that they can react to each other and the system can 'understand' a greater proportion of the users actions. Crawford suggests approaches that only use, for example, pictorial languages or restricted versions of English.

Planning-based systems can be integrated into any of the above approaches to ensure narrative cohesion. The system does this by anticipating potential holes in the plot and repairing them by introducing new information and events. Two such systems include Automated Story Director (ASD), which forms narrative repairs based on plot points predefined by the author, and Player-Specific Automated Storytelling (PAST), which chooses from several possible repairs according to the player's previous behaviors. PAST characterizes a player along five vectors of style based on Robin Laws' work on player types—fighter, power gamer, storyteller, method actor, and tactician—and may choose to solve a broken plot point for a fighter by adding a battle with a new character, or for a storyteller by adding new background information that justifies the break.

Evaluation
The success of an interactive storytelling experience depends on a balanced dramatic structure and user agency. A dramatically interesting narrative experience is one that moderates tension between characters and events over time, such that conflicts arise logically and are not left without resolution. It must also differ noticeably on every "playthrough" as a function of the user's freedom to interact with characters and objects in the virtual world. This can be achieved to varying degrees of success by branching, emergent, character-driven, and plot-driven systems, but no existing system fully achieves a lifelike experience. AIs do not yet have a human grasp of the rules of drama and narrative, so existing interactive dramas produce a limited number of significantly different story outcomes, relative to the amount of labor required of the author.

There have been several attempts at formalizing an evaluation system for interactive dramas, despite the fact that all existing projects are still in experimental stages. Player agency and fun remain the primary concerns, though fun is often exchanged for more narrative-specific metrics, like "interestingness" and "suspense." Likert scales filled out by players create a rough quantitative picture of user experience, but leave out much of the subjective interpretation that lies behind complex human interactions.

Mehta et al. focused on conversation-centric systems to develop qualitative metrics for the user's successful engagements, instead of quantitative measures of "inappropriate utterances" (in which the AI misunderstands player input and responds nonsensically) and other technical failures. After a "breakdown" in conversation, how effectively the user incorporates it into the overall understanding of the characters and story depends on design features. In their study of Façade, some AI actor breakdowns include shallow semantic understanding, inverted meanings, and the timing of responses. Artificially intelligent agents have trouble translating ambiguous user input into the limited narrative meaning system, as when "sad" or "hurt" is interpreted only as a reference to clinical depression. Similarly, negative and positive user sentiments are often confused with one another, especially if a positive statement is preceded by disagreement with a negative one. This is exacerbated if a user cannot send a reply fast enough – their utterance is understood as referring to the most recent speaker, leading to unintended interactions. However, background information is referenced often enough for a player to invent narrative justifications for apparently strange behaviors, which most participants did.

The Oz Project
The Oz Project was an attempt in the early 1990s to use intelligent agent technology to attack the challenges in IS. Its architecture included a simulated physical world, several characters, an interactor, a theory of presentation, and a drama manager. Users communicated with the system using either a text based or graphical interface.

Façade
Façade is an artificial-intelligence-based approach created by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. It was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Slamdance Independent Games Festival and is recognized as the first true interactive storytelling software. It is text based and uses natural language processing and other artificial intelligence routines to direct the action.

HEFTI
The Hybrid Evolutionary-Fuzzy Time-based Interactive (HEFTI) storytelling system was produced at the University of Texas at Austin and uses genetic algorithms to recombine and evaluate story components generated from a set of story templates. Although Crawford described it as the "wrong approach to development systems [...] incomprehensible to the kind of creative talent needed for storytelling," it continues to be discussed as a research and approach and genetic algorithm continue to be considered a potential tool for use in the area.

Library of story traces
Figa and Tarau have used WordNet to build technologies useful to interactive storytelling. This approach defines 'story traces' as an abstract reduction (or skeleton) of a story, and 'story projection' as a fragment of a story that can be treated as a single dramatic building block. This work seeks to build up large repositories of narrative forms in such a way that these forms can later be combined.

Interactive narrative design
As defined by Stephen Dinehart, Interactive narrative design combines ludology, narratology and game design to form interactive entertainment development methodologies. Interactive entertainment experiences allow the player to witness data as navigable, participatory, and dramatic in real-time: “a narratological craft which focuses on the structuralist, or literary semiotic creation of stories." Interactive Narrative design seeks to accomplish this via viewer/user/player (VUP) navigated dataspaces.

Interactive narrative design focuses on creating meaningful participatory story experiences with interactive systems. The aim is to transport the player through play into the videogame (dataspace) using their visual and auditory senses. When interactive narrative design is successful, the VUP (viewer/user/player) believes that they are experiencing a story.

Generative web series
Tour-Réservoir is the first generative web series, conceived by French artist Jean Michel Bruyère and his collective LFKs. Launched in 2016, it was developed and realised in co-operation with Le Volcan - Scène nationale du Havre, 296 inhabitants from a suburb of the city of Le Havre in France and more than 100 local music groups.

The website platform offers an active visit through five media – radio, TV, book, series, music video. The users can choose among a wide range of material which topics, actress(es) and music they want to appear/listen to and they can edit their own episodes or music videos.

It was nominated at the Côté Court short film festival in Pantin (Paris) in the New Media category in 2017.

Summary table
Story possibilities are not precisely calculable, and are represented as orders, such that O(10) would be in the order of tens of stories, and O(1) would be fewer than 10 unique story possibilities.

title: Interactive storytelling


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Rookie

A rookie is a person new to an occupation, profession, or hobby. In sports, a rookie is a professional athlete in their first season (or year).

In contrast with a veteran who has experience, a rookie is typically considered needing more training and learning, though they may bring a new outside expertise to a job.

Etymology
The Oxford English Dictionary states that the origins are uncertain, but that perhaps it is a corruption of the word recruit. The earliest example in the OED is from Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads (published 1892): "So 'ark an' 'eed, you rookies, which is always grumblin' sore", referring to rookies in the sense of raw recruits to the British Army. At least during the beginning of the 20th century, in the British Army the term "rookie" was typically used in place of "recruit" as exemplified in Trenching at Gallipoli by John Gallishaw (New York Century Co.: 1916) and in The Amateur Army by Patrick MacGill (London, Herbert Jenkins: 1915). Perhaps the expression is derived from "rook", whereby a "rookie" would be someone who is cheated or defrauded.

Sports culture
In some sports there are traditions in which rookies must do things, or tricks are played on them. Examples in baseball include players having to dress up in very strange costumes, or getting hit in the face with a cream pie; a traditional rookie's "hazing" procedure in American football involves taping players to a goalpost and dousing them with ice water, Gatorade, and other substances.

 * In Major League Baseball, the league has cracked down on hazing by enacting an Anti-Hazing and Anti-Bullying Policy which prohibits players from dressing up as the opposite sex, or wearing offensive costumes based on race, sex, nationality, age, sexual orientation, and gender identify.

American football
In the National Football League a rookie is any player who is in their first season playing professional football, having never signed a contract with a professional team before. The NFL awards the best rookie with the Associated Press NFL Rookie of the Year Award, as voted upon the Associated Press. In the NFL, rookies have special contract rules which limit how much a team can pay them as well as limiting the length of the contract, as per stipulations laid out in the NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Auto racing
NASCAR and INDYCAR rookies (and non-rookie NASCAR drivers who are making their first start at a track that is not holding its first race) are denoted by a yellow stripe on sections of the car as prescribed in the respective rule books. In NASCAR, the rookie stripe is located on the tail panel of the race car.

NASCAR
The following rules are for rookie status in a national series:
 * Must have run no more than five (prior to 2001 in Cup and Xfinity, and in the Truck Series for age-eligible drivers), seven (2001–10, Cup and Xfinity), and have been declared to race for driver points in that series (2011–present), races in any previous season.
 * In the Camping World Truck Series, a driver that is 17 at the start of the season and does not make ten starts overall is eligible in his first full season after turning 18. Truck Series drivers who are 16 and 17 may only participate in nine races during the season based on circuits.
 * Drivers who compete in more than five races in a higher NASCAR-sanctioned series are not eligible for the award in a lower series if they have not declared for the higher series.
 * If a driver does not start eight races before the end of Race 20 on the schedule, they will immediately become ineligible to earn rookie points for the rest of that season and starting in 2011, remained declared for that series. Drivers may change series declaration in order to avoid this.
 * A driver may not receive rookie points if they start a race for a team that they did not qualify with. However, they are still eligible for championship points in that race.

INDYCAR
The following rules are for rookie status in the NTT IndyCar Series:
 * Must not have participated in more than three NTT IndyCar Series races in a season.
 * A veteran driver in the Indianapolis 500 may still be a Series Rookie if he has not competed in more than three series races overall.
 * A driver who has never raced in the Indianapolis 500 but has made a legal season of NTT IndyCar Series races is still an Indianapolis 500 rookie in his first start.

Baseball
To qualify as a rookie in Major League Baseball (MLB), a player must not have exceeded 130 at bats or fifty innings pitched in the majors, and also fewer than 45 days on the active rosters of major league clubs (excluding time on the disabled list or any time after rosters are expanded on September 1) in their previous seasons. Major League Baseball awards the best rookie with the Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year Award, as voted upon by the Baseball Writers' Association of America and first bestowed in 1947. Since 2001, MLB also issues the Major League Baseball Rookie of the Month Award.

Basketball
In the National Basketball Association, a rookie is any player who has never played a game in the NBA until that year and the past 1 years. The NBA awards the best rookie with the NBA Rookie of the Year Award, as voted upon by a selected panel of United States and Canadian sportswriters and broadcasters. In the NBA, rookies have special contract rules which limit how much a team can pay them as well as limiting the length of the contract.

Ice hockey
To qualify as a rookie in the National Hockey League, a player must not have played in more than 25 NHL games in any preceding seasons, nor in six or more NHL games in each of any two preceding seasons. Any player at least 26 years of age (by September 15 of that season) is not considered a rookie.

Soccer
In Major League Soccer, a rookie is a player who has had no prior professional experience. MLS awards the best rookie with the MLS Rookie of the Year Award.

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

title: Rookie


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The Abyssinians

The Abyssinians are a Jamaican roots reggae group, famous for their close harmonies and promotion of the Rastafari movement in their lyrics.

History
The vocal trio was originally formed in 1968 by Bernard Collins and Donald Manning. Their first song was "Satta Massagana", which was strongly influenced by Carlton Manning's "Happy Land". "Satta Massagana" is a Rastafarian hymn sung partly in the Ethiopian Amharic language. They recruited a third vocalist, who was still at school and often unable to attend rehearsals; he was soon replaced by Donald's brother Lynford Manning, who like Donald had previously been a member of their brother Carlton Manning's group Carlton and The Shoes.

"Satta Massagana" was first recorded for producer Clement "Coxsone" Dodd in March 1969, but he decided against releasing it, seeing no commercial potential for what he saw as a song constituting cultural subversion. In 1971, the group purchased the master tapes from Dodd for £90 and released it on their own Clinch label, the single becoming a massive success, prompting Dodd to release his own instrumental and deejay versions. The group released further takes on the song on Clinch by Tommy McCook, Big Youth, and Dillinger, as well as their own "Mabrak", featuring the group reciting passages from the Old Testament. It has since been recorded by dozens of artists. The group's second release, "Declaration of Rights", featured Leroy Sibbles on backing vocals, and like their first was a huge hit in Jamaica, (and subsequently in the international market) and has been covered several times since. Their 1973 single "Y Mas Gan" was similar to "Satta" in its use of Amharic.

The group continued to record throughout the 1970s for producers including Lloyd Daley, Tommy Cowan, and Geoffrey Chung, and their debut album, Forward on to Zion was produced by Clive Hunt and released in 1976. The follow-up, Arise (1978), was recorded under stressful conditions with internal rivalries threatening to break up the group, and after the album's release, Collins left the band, to be eventually replaced by Carlton Manning. This line-up performed at the 1979 Reggae Sunsplash festival, but split up the following year.

Donald Manning had a brief solo career in the early 1980s, in which he recorded as Donald Abyssinian.

Bernard Collins launched his own version of the group in the late 1980s, with two versions of the group existing for a time. The original line-up reunited in 1998 and went on to record new material, including the singles "African Princess" and "Swing Low" and the album Reunion, although Collins was not involved in songwriting at this time. Collins left again in 1999 and released material as Bernard Collins & the Abyssinians, releasing an album the same year.

The Abyssinians are credited on "Slave Song", from Sade's 2002 album, Lovers Live, which starts with a sample from the Abyssinians' song "African Race".

Lynford Manning died on 25 June 2024.

Studio albums

 * 1976 : Satta Massagana - Jam Sounds (reissued 1988 on Clinch, 1993, 2007 on Heartbeat, also released as Satta and Forward on to Zion)
 * 1978 : Arise - Tuff Gong/Virgin/Clinch
 * 1998 : Reunion - Artists Only

Compilation albums

 * 1982 : Forward - Alligator
 * 1994 : Best of the Abyssinians - Musidisc
 * 1996 : 19.95 + TAX
 * 1998 : Satta Dub - Tabou 1
 * 1998 : Declaration of Dub - Heartbeat
 * 1999 : Last Days - Clinch (credited to Bernard Collins)
 * 2003 : Abyssinians & Friends Tree of Satta vol. 1 - Blood & Fire

Live albums

 * 2002 : Live in San Francisco - 2b1 II

title: The Abyssinians


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Hodge theory

In mathematics, Hodge theory, named after W. V. D. Hodge, is a method for studying the cohomology groups of a smooth manifold M using partial differential equations. The key observation is that, given a Riemannian metric on M, every cohomology class has a canonical representative, a differential form that vanishes under the Laplacian operator of the metric. Such forms are called harmonic.

The theory was developed by Hodge in the 1930s to study algebraic geometry, and it built on the work of Georges de Rham on de Rham cohomology. It has major applications in two settings: Riemannian manifolds and Kähler manifolds. Hodge's primary motivation, the study of complex projective varieties, is encompassed by the latter case. Hodge theory has become an important tool in algebraic geometry, particularly through its connection to the study of algebraic cycles.

While Hodge theory is intrinsically dependent upon the real and complex numbers, it can be applied to questions in number theory. In arithmetic situations, the tools of p-adic Hodge theory have given alternative proofs of, or analogous results to, classical Hodge theory.

History
The field of algebraic topology was still nascent in the 1920s. It had not yet developed the notion of cohomology, and the interaction between differential forms and topology was poorly understood. In 1928, Élie Cartan published a note, Sur les nombres de Betti des espaces de groupes clos, in which he suggested — but did not prove — that differential forms and topology should be linked. Upon reading it, Georges de Rham, then a student, was inspired. In his 1931 thesis, he proved a result now called de Rham's theorem. By Stokes' theorem, integration of differential forms along singular chains induces, for any compact smooth manifold M, a bilinear pairing
 * $$H_k(M; \mathbf{R}) \times H^k_{\text{dR}}(M; \mathbf{R}) \to \mathbf{R}.$$

As originally stated, de Rham's theorem asserts that this is a perfect pairing, and that therefore each of the terms on the left-hand side are vector space duals of one another. In contemporary language, de Rham's theorem is more often phrased as the statement that singular cohomology with real coefficients is isomorphic to de Rham cohomology:
 * $$H^k_{\text{sing}}(M; \mathbf{R}) \cong H^k_{\text{dR}}(M; \mathbf{R}).$$

De Rham's original statement is then a consequence of the fact that over the reals, singular cohomology is the dual of singular homology.

Separately, a 1927 paper of Solomon Lefschetz used topological methods to reprove theorems of Riemann. In modern language, if ω1 and ω2 are holomorphic differentials on an algebraic curve C, then their wedge product is necessarily zero because C has only one complex dimension; consequently, the cup product of their cohomology classes is zero, and when made explicit, this gave Lefschetz a new proof of the Riemann relations. Additionally, if ω is a non-zero holomorphic differential, then $$\sqrt{-1}\,\omega \wedge \bar\omega$$ is a positive volume form, from which Lefschetz was able to rederive Riemann's inequalities. In 1929, W. V. D. Hodge learned of Lefschetz's paper. He immediately observed that similar principles applied to algebraic surfaces. More precisely, if ω is a non-zero holomorphic form on an algebraic surface, then $$\sqrt{-1}\,\omega \wedge \bar\omega$$ is positive, so the cup product of $$\omega$$ and $$\bar\omega$$ must be non-zero. It follows that ω itself must represent a non-zero cohomology class, so its periods cannot all be zero. This resolved a question of Severi.

Hodge felt that these techniques should be applicable to higher dimensional varieties as well. His colleague Peter Fraser recommended de Rham's thesis to him. In reading de Rham's thesis, Hodge realized that the real and imaginary parts of a holomorphic 1-form on a Riemann surface were in some sense dual to each other. He suspected that there should be a similar duality in higher dimensions; this duality is now known as the Hodge star operator. He further conjectured that each cohomology class should have a distinguished representative with the property that both it and its dual vanish under the exterior derivative operator; these are now called harmonic forms. Hodge devoted most of the 1930s to this problem. His earliest published attempt at a proof appeared in 1933, but he considered it "crude in the extreme". Hermann Weyl, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the era, found himself unable to determine whether Hodge's proof was correct or not. In 1936, Hodge published a new proof. While Hodge considered the new proof much superior, a serious flaw was discovered by Bohnenblust. Independently, Hermann Weyl and Kunihiko Kodaira modified Hodge's proof to repair the error. This established Hodge's sought-for isomorphism between harmonic forms and cohomology classes.

In retrospect it is clear that the technical difficulties in the existence theorem did not really require any significant new ideas, but merely a careful extension of classical methods. The real novelty, which was Hodge’s major contribution, was in the conception of harmonic integrals and their relevance to algebraic geometry. This triumph of concept over technique is reminiscent of a similar episode in the work of Hodge’s great predecessor Bernhard Riemann.

—M. F. Atiyah, William Vallance Douglas Hodge, 17 June 1903 – 7 July 1975, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, vol. 22, 1976, pp. 169–192.

De Rham cohomology
The Hodge theory references the de Rham complex. Let M be a smooth manifold. For a non-negative integer k, let Ωk(M) be the real vector space of smooth differential forms of degree k on M. The de Rham complex is the sequence of differential operators

 * $$0\to \Omega^0(M) \xrightarrow{d_0} \Omega^1(M)\xrightarrow{d_1} \cdots\xrightarrow{d_{n-1}} \Omega^n(M)\xrightarrow{d_n} 0,$$

where dk denotes the exterior derivative on Ωk(M). This is a cochain complex in the sense that d$k+1$ ∘ d$k$ = 0 (also written d = 0). De Rham's theorem says that the singular cohomology of M with real coefficients is computed by the de Rham complex:

 * $$H^k(M,\mathbf{R})\cong \frac{\ker d_k}{\operatorname{im} d_{k-1}}.$$

Operators in Hodge theory
Choose a Riemannian metric g on M and recall that:

 * $$\Omega^k(M) = \Gamma \left (\bigwedge\nolimits^k T^*(M) \right ).$$

The metric yields an inner product on each fiber $$\bigwedge\nolimits^k(T_p^*(M))$$ by extending (see Gramian matrix) the inner product induced by g from each cotangent fiber $$T_p^*(M)$$ to its $$k^{th}$$ exterior product: $$\bigwedge\nolimits^k(T_p^*(M))$$. The $$\Omega^k(M)$$ inner product is then defined as the integral of the pointwise inner product of a given pair of k-forms over M with respect to the volume form $$\sigma$$ associated with g. Explicitly, given some $$\omega,\tau \in \Omega^k(M)$$ we have

 * $$ (\omega,\tau) \mapsto \langle\omega,\tau\rangle := \int_M \langle \omega(p),\tau(p)\rangle_p \sigma.$$

Naturally the above inner product induces a norm, when that norm is finite on some fixed k-form:

 * $$\langle\omega,\omega\rangle = \| \omega\|^2 < \infty,$$

then the integrand is a real valued, square integrable function on M, evaluated at a given point via its point-wise norms,

 * $$ \|\omega(p)\|_p:M \to \mathbf{R}\in L^2(M).$$

Consider the adjoint operator of d with respect to these inner products:

 * $$\delta : \Omega^{k+1}(M) \to \Omega^k(M).$$

Then the Laplacian on forms is defined by

 * $$\Delta = d\delta + \delta d.$$

This is a second-order linear differential operator, generalizing the Laplacian for functions on Rn. By definition, a form on M is harmonic if its Laplacian is zero:

 * $$\mathcal{H}_\Delta^k(M) = \{\alpha\in\Omega^k(M)\mid\Delta\alpha=0\}.$$

The Laplacian appeared first in mathematical physics. In particular, Maxwell's equations say that the electromagnetic field in a vacuum, i.e. absent any charges, is represented by a 2-form F such that ΔF = 0 on spacetime, viewed as Minkowski space of dimension 4.

Every harmonic form α on a closed Riemannian manifold is closed, meaning that dα = 0. As a result, there is a canonical mapping $$\varphi:\mathcal{H}_\Delta^k(M)\to H^k(M,\mathbf{R})$$. The Hodge theorem states that $$\varphi$$ is an isomorphism of vector spaces. In other words, each real cohomology class on M has a unique harmonic representative. Concretely, the harmonic representative is the unique closed form of minimum L2 norm that represents a given cohomology class. The Hodge theorem was proved using the theory of elliptic partial differential equations, with Hodge's initial arguments completed by Kodaira and others in the 1940s.

For example, the Hodge theorem implies that the cohomology groups with real coefficients of a closed manifold are finite-dimensional. (Admittedly, there are other ways to prove this.) Indeed, the operators Δ are elliptic, and the kernel of an elliptic operator on a closed manifold is always a finite-dimensional vector space. Another consequence of the Hodge theorem is that a Riemannian metric on a closed manifold M determines a real-valued inner product on the integral cohomology of M modulo torsion. It follows, for example, that the image of the isometry group of M in the general linear group GL(H$∗$(M, Z)) is finite (because the group of isometries of a lattice is finite).

A variant of the Hodge theorem is the Hodge decomposition. This says that there is a unique decomposition of any differential form ω on a closed Riemannian manifold as a sum of three parts in the form

 * $$\omega = d \alpha +\delta \beta + \gamma,$$

in which γ is harmonic: Δγ = 0. In terms of the L2 metric on differential forms, this gives an orthogonal direct sum decomposition:

 * $$ \Omega^k(M) \cong \operatorname{im} d_{k-1} \oplus \operatorname{im} \delta_{k+1} \oplus \mathcal H_\Delta^k(M).$$

The Hodge decomposition is a generalization of the Helmholtz decomposition for the de Rham complex.

Hodge theory of elliptic complexes
Atiyah and Bott defined elliptic complexes as a generalization of the de Rham complex. The Hodge theorem extends to this setting, as follows. Let $$E_0,E_1,\ldots,E_N$$ be vector bundles, equipped with metrics, on a closed smooth manifold M with a volume form dV. Suppose that

 * $$L_i:\Gamma(E_i)\to\Gamma(E_{i+1})$$

are linear differential operators acting on C∞ sections of these vector bundles, and that the induced sequence

 * $$ 0\to\Gamma(E_0)\to \Gamma(E_1) \to \cdots \to \Gamma(E_N) \to 0$$

is an elliptic complex. Introduce the direct sums:

 * $$\begin{align}

\mathcal E^\bullet &= \bigoplus\nolimits_i \Gamma(E_i) \\ L &= \bigoplus\nolimits_i L_i:\mathcal E^\bullet\to\mathcal E^\bullet \end{align}$$

and let L$∗$ be the adjoint of L. Define the elliptic operator Δ = LL$∗$ + L$∗$L. As in the de Rham case, this yields the vector space of harmonic sections

 * $$\mathcal H=\{e\in\mathcal E^\bullet\mid\Delta e=0\}.$$

Let $$H:\mathcal E^\bullet\to\mathcal H$$ be the orthogonal projection, and let G be the Green's operator for Δ. The Hodge theorem then asserts the following:

 * 1) H and G are well-defined.
 * 2) Id = H + ΔG = H + GΔ
 * 3) LG = GL, L$∗$G = GL$∗$
 * 4) The cohomology of the complex is canonically isomorphic to the space of harmonic sections, $$H(E_j)\cong\mathcal H(E_j)$$, in the sense that each cohomology class has a unique harmonic representative.

There is also a Hodge decomposition in this situation, generalizing the statement above for the de Rham complex.

Hodge theory for complex projective varieties
Let X be a smooth complex projective manifold, meaning that X is a closed complex submanifold of some complex projective space CPN. By Chow's theorem, complex projective manifolds are automatically algebraic: they are defined by the vanishing of homogeneous polynomial equations on CPN. The standard Riemannian metric on CPN induces a Riemannian metric on X which has a strong compatibility with the complex structure, making X a Kähler manifold.

For a complex manifold X and a natural number r, every C∞ r-form on X (with complex coefficients) can be written uniquely as a sum of forms of type (p, q) with p + q = r, meaning forms that can locally be written as a finite sum of terms, with each term taking the form
 * $$f\, dz_1\wedge\cdots\wedge dz_p\wedge d\overline{w_1}

\wedge\cdots\wedge d\overline{w_q}$$ with f a C∞ function and the zs and ws holomorphic functions. On a Kähler manifold, the (p, q) components of a harmonic form are again harmonic. Therefore, for any compact Kähler manifold X, the Hodge theorem gives a decomposition of the cohomology of X with complex coefficients as a direct sum of complex vector spaces:
 * $$H^r(X,\mathbf{C})=\bigoplus_{p+q=r} H^{p,q}(X).$$

This decomposition is in fact independent of the choice of Kähler metric (but there is no analogous decomposition for a general compact complex manifold). On the other hand, the Hodge decomposition genuinely depends on the structure of X as a complex manifold, whereas the group Hr(X, C) depends only on the underlying topological space of X.

Taking wedge products of these harmonic representatives corresponds to the cup product in cohomology, so the cup product with complex coefficients is compatible with the Hodge decomposition:

 * $$\smile \colon H^{p,q}(X) \times H^{p',q'}(X) \rightarrow H^{p+p',q+q'}(X).$$

The piece Hp,q(X) of the Hodge decomposition can be identified with a coherent sheaf cohomology group, which depends only on X as a complex manifold (not on the choice of Kähler metric):
 * $$H^{p,q}(X)\cong H^q(X,\Omega^p),$$

where Ωp denotes the sheaf of holomorphic p-forms on X. For example, Hp,0(X) is the space of holomorphic p-forms on X. (If X is projective, Serre's GAGA theorem implies that a holomorphic p-form on all of X is in fact algebraic.)

On the other hand, the integral can be written as the cap product of the homology class of Z and the cohomology class represented by $$\alpha$$. By Poincaré duality, the homology class of Z is dual to a cohomology class which we will call [Z], and the cap product can be computed by taking the cup product of [Z] and α and capping with the fundamental class of X.

Because [Z] is a cohomology class, it has a Hodge decomposition. By the computation we did above, if we cup this class with any class of type $$(p,q) \ne (k,k)$$, then we get zero. Because $$H^{2n}(X, \Complex) = H^{n,n}(X)$$, we conclude that [Z] must lie in $$H^{n-k,n-k}(X)$$.

The Hodge number hp,q(X) means the dimension of the complex vector space Hp.q(X). These are important invariants of a smooth complex projective variety; they do not change when the complex structure of X is varied continuously, and yet they are in general not topological invariants. Among the properties of Hodge numbers are Hodge symmetry hp,q = hq,p (because Hp,q(X) is the complex conjugate of Hq,p(X)) and hp,q = hn−p,n−q (by Serre duality).

The Hodge numbers of a smooth complex projective variety (or compact Kähler manifold) can be listed in the Hodge diamond (shown in the case of complex dimension 2):

For example, every smooth projective curve of genus g has Hodge diamond

For another example, every K3 surface has Hodge diamond

The Betti numbers of X are the sum of the Hodge numbers in a given row. A basic application of Hodge theory is then that the odd Betti numbers b2a+1 of a smooth complex projective variety (or compact Kähler manifold) are even, by Hodge symmetry. This is not true for compact complex manifolds in general, as shown by the example of the Hopf surface, which is diffeomorphic to S1 × S3 and hence has b1 = 1.

The "Kähler package" is a powerful set of restrictions on the cohomology of smooth complex projective varieties (or compact Kähler manifolds), building on Hodge theory. The results include the Lefschetz hyperplane theorem, the hard Lefschetz theorem, and the Hodge-Riemann bilinear relations. Many of these results follow from fundamental technical tools which may be proven for compact Kähler manifolds using Hodge theory, including the Kähler identities and the $\partial \bar \partial$-lemma.

Hodge theory and extensions such as non-abelian Hodge theory also give strong restrictions on the possible fundamental groups of compact Kähler manifolds.

Algebraic cycles and the Hodge conjecture
Let $$X$$ be a smooth complex projective variety. A complex subvariety $$Y$$ in $$X$$ of codimension $$p$$ defines an element of the cohomology group $$H^{2p}(X,\Z)$$. Moreover, the resulting class has a special property: its image in the complex cohomology $$H^{2p}(X,\Complex)$$ lies in the middle piece of the Hodge decomposition, $$H^{p,p}(X)$$. The Hodge conjecture predicts a converse: every element of $$H^{2p}(X,\Z)$$ whose image in complex cohomology lies in the subspace $$H^{p,p}(X)$$ should have a positive integral multiple that is a $$\Z$$-linear combination of classes of complex subvarieties of $$X$$. (Such a linear combination is called an algebraic cycle on $$X$$.)

A crucial point is that the Hodge decomposition is a decomposition of cohomology with complex coefficients that usually does not come from a decomposition of cohomology with integral (or rational) coefficients. As a result, the intersection
 * $$(H^{2p}(X,\Z)/{\text{torsion}})\cap H^{p,p}(X)\subseteq H^{2p}(X,\Complex)$$

may be much smaller than the whole group $$H^{2p}(X,\Z)/\text{torsion}$$, even if the Hodge number $$h^{p,p}$$ is big. In short, the Hodge conjecture predicts that the possible "shapes" of complex subvarieties of $$X$$ (as described by cohomology) are determined by the Hodge structure of $$X$$ (the combination of integral cohomology with the Hodge decomposition of complex cohomology).

The Lefschetz (1,1)-theorem says that the Hodge conjecture is true for $$p=1$$ (even integrally, that is, without the need for a positive integral multiple in the statement).

The Hodge structure of a variety $$X$$ describes the integrals of algebraic differential forms on $$X$$ over homology classes in $$X$$. In this sense, Hodge theory is related to a basic issue in calculus: there is in general no "formula" for the integral of an algebraic function. In particular, definite integrals of algebraic functions, known as periods, can be transcendental numbers. The difficulty of the Hodge conjecture reflects the lack of understanding of such integrals in general.

Example: For a smooth complex projective K3 surface $$X$$, the group $$H^2(X,\mathbb{Z})$$ is isomorphic to $$\mathbb{Z}^{22}$$, and $$H^{1,1}(X)$$ is isomorphic to $$\mathbb{C}^{20}$$. Their intersection can have rank anywhere between 1 and 20; this rank is called the Picard number of $$X$$. The moduli space of all projective K3 surfaces has a countably infinite set of components, each of complex dimension 19. The subspace of K3 surfaces with Picard number $$a$$ has dimension $$20-a$$. (Thus, for most projective K3 surfaces, the intersection of $$H^2(X,\mathbb{Z})$$ with $$H^{1,1}(X)$$ is isomorphic to $$\mathbb Z$$, but for "special" K3 surfaces the intersection can be bigger.)

This example suggests several different roles played by Hodge theory in complex algebraic geometry. First, Hodge theory gives restrictions on which topological spaces can have the structure of a smooth complex projective variety. Second, Hodge theory gives information about the moduli space of smooth complex projective varieties with a given topological type. The best case is when the Torelli theorem holds, meaning that the variety is determined up to isomorphism by its Hodge structure. Finally, Hodge theory gives information about the Chow group of algebraic cycles on a given variety. The Hodge conjecture is about the image of the cycle map from Chow groups to ordinary cohomology, but Hodge theory also gives information about the kernel of the cycle map, for example using the intermediate Jacobians which are built from the Hodge structure.

Generalizations
Mixed Hodge theory, developed by Pierre Deligne, extends Hodge theory to all complex algebraic varieties, not necessarily smooth or compact. Namely, the cohomology of any complex algebraic variety has a more general type of decomposition, a mixed Hodge structure.

A different generalization of Hodge theory to singular varieties is provided by intersection homology. Namely, Morihiko Saito showed that the intersection homology of any complex projective variety (not necessarily smooth) has a pure Hodge structure, just as in the smooth case. In fact, the whole Kähler package extends to intersection homology.

A fundamental aspect of complex geometry is that there are continuous families of non-isomorphic complex manifolds (which are all diffeomorphic as real manifolds). Phillip Griffiths's notion of a variation of Hodge structure describes how the Hodge structure of a smooth complex projective variety $$X$$ varies when $$X$$ varies. In geometric terms, this amounts to studying the period mapping associated to a family of varieties. Saito's theory of Hodge modules is a generalization. Roughly speaking, a mixed Hodge module on a variety $$X$$ is a sheaf of mixed Hodge structures over $$X$$, as would arise from a family of varieties which need not be smooth or compact.

title: Hodge theory


text:
Starvation (computer science)

In computer science, resource starvation is a problem encountered in concurrent computing where a process is perpetually denied necessary resources to process its work. Starvation may be caused by errors in a scheduling or mutual exclusion algorithm, but can also be caused by resource leaks, and can be intentionally caused via a denial-of-service attack such as a fork bomb.

When starvation is impossible in a concurrent algorithm, the algorithm is called starvation-free, lockout-freed or said to have finite bypass. This property is an instance of liveness, and is one of the two requirements for any mutual exclusion algorithm; the other being correctness. The name "finite bypass" means that any process (concurrent part) of the algorithm is bypassed at most a finite number times before being allowed access to the shared resource.

Scheduling
Starvation is usually caused by an overly simplistic scheduling algorithm. For example, if a (poorly designed) multi-tasking system always switches between the first two tasks while a third never gets to run, then the third task is being starved of CPU time. The scheduling algorithm, which is part of the kernel, is supposed to allocate resources equitably; that is, the algorithm should allocate resources so that no process perpetually lacks necessary resources.

Many operating system schedulers employ the concept of process priority. A high priority process A will run before a low priority process B. If the high priority process (process A) blocks and never yields, the low priority process (B) will (in some systems) never be scheduled—it will experience starvation. If there is an even higher priority process X, which is dependent on a result from process B, then process X might never finish, even though it is the most important process in the system. This condition is called a priority inversion. Modern scheduling algorithms normally contain code to guarantee that all processes will receive a minimum amount of each important resource (most often CPU time) in order to prevent any process from being subjected to starvation.

In computer networks, especially wireless networks, scheduling algorithms may suffer from scheduling starvation. An example is maximum throughput scheduling.

Starvation is normally caused by deadlock in that it causes a process to freeze. Two or more processes become deadlocked when each of them is doing nothing while waiting for a resource occupied by another program in the same set. On the other hand, a process is in starvation when it is waiting for a resource that is continuously given to other processes. Starvation-freedom is a stronger guarantee than the absence of deadlock: a mutual exclusion algorithm that must choose to allow one of two processes into a critical section and picks one arbitrarily is deadlock-free, but not starvation-free.

A possible solution to starvation is to use a scheduling algorithm with priority queue that also uses the aging technique. Aging is a technique of gradually increasing the priority of processes that wait in the system for a long time.

title: Starvation (computer science)


text:
Aswad

Aswad are a British reggae group, noted for adding strong R&B and soul influences to the reggae sound. They have been performing since the mid-1970s, having released a total of 21 albums. Their UK hit singles include the number one "Don't Turn Around" (1988) and "Shine" (1994). "Aswad" is Arabic for "black". They are three-time Grammy Award nominees.

History
The members of Aswad are UK descendants of immigrants from the Caribbean. They attended John Kelly/Holland Park School. Aswad was formed in 1975 in Ladbroke Grove area of West London.

The original members of Aswad were guitarist/vocalist Brinsley "Chaka B" Forde, drummer/vocalist Angus "Drummie Zeb" Gaye, lead guitarist/vocalist Donald "Dee" Griffiths, bassist George "Ras" Oban, and keyboardist Courtney "Khaki" Hemmings. Aswad were the backing band of Burning Spear's 1977 Live album, recorded at the Rainbow Theatre in London. Other contributors included Vin Gordon, and Karl Pitterson.

Initially, the band produced music in the roots reggae vein, with members contributing songs individually and with Forde acting as the band's principal songwriter. The band's dynamic soon began to change however. Shortly after the release of their self-titled debut album in 1976, Hemmings left and was replaced by Tony "Gad" Robinson (the only time in the band's history where a departing member would be officially replaced by an incoming musician). The band then released their second studio effort, Hulet, in 1978, before George Oban ( who later played with Burning Spear and African Headcharge ) departed the band in 1979, with Robinson taking over the position of bassist as well as continuing his role as keyboardist. The following year saw Griffiths depart, leaving Forde as the band's sole guitarist. During this early period in the band's history they were distinctly different from Jamaican reggae acts, in that they wrote songs that dealt with the issues surrounding the experiences of black youths growing-up in the UK; such as "Three Babylon" and "It's Not Our Wish","Natural Progression", "Ghetto in the Sky". and the powerful jazz-influenced instrumental "Warrior Charge", which is still much played by roots reggae sound systems worldwide. The band continued making roots reggae and dub music, and in 1985, released Jah Shaka Meets Aswad in Addis Ababa Studio.

Once the band's line-up had stabilised into the trio of Forde, Gaye, and Robinson, Aswad followed a more commercial reggae style, gaining a wider audience with the New Chapter album (1981). They then followed this with the Michael Reuben Campbell-produced A New Chapter of Dub LP which was a dub of the entire New Chapter album. Clifton "Bigga" Morrison of Prince Far I's band, The Arabs, played bass on some of the tracks. Not Satisfied was a London roots-reggae album released in 1982. In August 1983, Aswad played live at Meanwhile Gardens on the Sunday of the Notting Hill Carnival; the resulting live album Live and Direct is a faithful record of that event, where they played a live dub set. "Love Fire" gained wide recognition when it was used as the backing rhythm for Dennis Brown's "Promised Land".

Among Aswad's catalogue of hits is "Don't Turn Around", a UK No. 1 hit in 1988, originally recorded by Tina Turner as a B-side to her "Typical Male" single. They followed this up with UK No. 11 hit "Give a Little Love", and a reggae-flavoured rendition of "Best of My Love", first popularised and written by The Eagles. In 1989, they contributed the single "Set Them Free" to the Greenpeace Rainbow Warriors album. In the same year, they performed together with Cliff Richard the song "Share a Dream", recorded the previous year, at Wembley Stadium as part of The Event (16 and 17 June 1989). Their next single, "Shine", was released in 1994 and was a big hit in much of Europe. Another track was the upbeat 1998 remake of The Police's "Invisible Sun", performed with Sting.

The band also hold the distinction of having played with each one of the ex-Wailers.

The band has toured extensively, playing in diverse locations from London's Royal Albert Hall and Montego Bay's Reggae Sunsplash, to gigs in West Africa, Israel and Japan.

Aswad underwent their first line-up change in sixteen years in 1996, when Forde departed the band for spiritual reasons, leaving Gaye as the only founding member. Once again, the remaining members opted not to seek to recruit a replacement musician, and thus Aswad became a duo of Gaye and Robinson. With the exception of a brief reunion with Forde in 2009 for the Island record label's 50th-anniversary celebrations, the band's line-up remained the same until Angus Gaye’s death on 2 September 2022, aged 62.

Aswad released their final studio album to date in 2009, with City Lock. They released the singles "What Is Love?" and "Do That Thing" in the same year.

Members

 * Current members
 * Tony "Gad" Robinson - bass, keyboards, vocals (1976-present)

 * Former members
 * Brinsley "Dan" Forde – vocals, lead & rhythm guitars (1975–1996, 2009)
 * Angus "Drummie Zeb" Gaye – vocals, drums (1975–2022; his death)
 * Donald "Dee" Griffiths – lead guitars (1975–1980)
 * Courtney "Khaki" Hemmings – keyboards (1975–1976)
 * George "Ras" Oban – bass (1975–1979)

 * Additional musicians

 * Stanley Andrew – lead guitars, rhythm guitars, acoustic guitars, vocals
 * Clifton "Bigga" Morrison – vocals, keyboards, melodica
 * Martin "Tatta" Augustine – lead guitars
 * John Kpiaye – guitars
 * Jimmy "Senyah" Haynes – lead guitars, acoustic guitars
 * Michael "Bammie" Rose – saxophone
 * Vin "Trommie" Gordon – trombone
 * Eddie "Tan Tan" Thornton – trumpet
 * Carlton "Bubblers" Ogilvie – keyboards
 * Jimmy "J-Slice" Neath – trumpet

 * Paul Garred – guitars
 * Michael Martin – keyboards
 * Patrick Tenyue – trumpet
 * Henry 'Buttons' Tenyue – trombone
 * Brian Edwards – saxophone
 * Trevor “T-BoNe” Jones – trombone
 * Perry "Lion" Melius – drums
 * Kenrick Rowe – drums
 * Paul Slowley – drums

Production work

 * Ace of Base remix of "Don't Turn Around" (No.5 hit in the UK)
 * Vanessa Mae – "Classical Gas" (#41 in UK)
 * Janet Kay – "Missing You"

title: Aswad


text:
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne is a 2003 third-person shooter game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Rockstar Games. It is the sequel to 2001's Max Payne and the second game in the Max Payne series. Set two years after the events of the first game, the sequel finds Max Payne working again as a detective for the New York City Police Department (NYPD), while struggling with nightmares about his troubled past. After being unexpectedly reunited with contract killer Mona Sax, Max must work with her to resolve a conspiracy filled with death and betrayal, which will test where his true loyalties lie.

Max Payne 2 is played from a third-person perspective. Throughout the single-player campaign, players mainly control Max, with Mona being playable in a few select levels. Both playable characters have access to a wide variety of weapons to eliminate enemies, as well as a bullet-time ability, which slows down time during combat. The bullet-time mechanic has been upgraded in the game to allow players to move faster as they kill more enemies, as well as reload weapons instantly. Due to the Havok physics engine being used, the game also features improved ragdoll physics. The story is again told mostly through graphic novel panels with voice-overs, although several traditional cutscenes are also used. Whereas the first game's plot was inspired by Norse mythology and traditional hard-boiled detective novels, the sequel is mostly based on tragic love stories like those seen in film noir, with Max and Mona's relationship being central to the game's narrative.

Max Payne 2 was released for Windows in October 2003, for the Xbox in November, and for the PlayStation 2 in December. The game received highly positive reviews from critics and, like its predecessor, has been cited as one of the greatest video games ever made. Praise focused on its action and story, while criticism targeted its short length. Despite the positive reception, the game sold poorly, leading Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two Interactive to cite Max Payne 2's sales as a cause for the company's reforecast finances of 2004. Max Payne 2 received several industry awards, including Outstanding Art Direction at the Golden Satellite Awards 2004, and Editors' Choice Awards from GamePro, IGN, and GameSpy. A sequel, Max Payne 3, was released by Rockstar in May 2012. Remakes of Max Payne 1 & 2 are in development by Remedy and will be published by Rockstar for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S.

Gameplay
Max Payne 2 is a third-person shooter featuring linear levels spread across three distinct chapters. Throughout the majority of the game, the player assumes the role of returning protagonist Max Payne; in several levels from the second and third chapters, the player controls secondary protagonist Mona Sax. Initially, the player's weapon is a 9mm pistol. As they progress, the player gains access to more powerful weapons including other handguns, shotguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and hand-thrown weapons. To move the game along, the player is told what the next objective is through Max's internal monologue, in which Max iterates what his next steps should be.

When first played, the game offers one difficulty level that is adjusted automatically if the game is too difficult for the player. For example, if the player's character dies too many times, the enemies' artificial intelligence is made less effective, while more health in the form of painkillers is made available. After completing the game once, other difficulty levels are unlocked. Two special game modes are also activated: New York Minute and Dead Man Walking. In New York Minute, the player is given a score based on the time taken to complete each level. The Dead Man Walking mode places Max in one of five scenarios, in which he must survive for as long as possible while fighting off endlessly respawning enemies.

Max Payne 2 allows the player to enable bullet-time, a mode that slows time, while still allowing the player to aim in real-time, to give the player more time to determine what they want to do. In this mode, the screen's color changes to a sepia tone to act as a visual cue. When in use, the bullet time meter will decrease until it is either empty or the player disables bullet time mode. The meter will eventually increase when not in use, and can be replenished quickly by killing enemies. To simulate the bullet time effect, Max can also execute a shoot-dodge maneuver. When the maneuver is performed, Max jumps in a direction specified by the player, and although bullet time is activated while Max is in mid-air, this will not deplete the bullet time meter. The combat system has been improved for Max Payne 2; the player can arm Max with a secondary weapon such as a grenade or Molotov cocktail, and when near an enemy, Max can pistol whip them. AI companions can occasionally come to Max's aid, although their deaths do not affect the gameplay or story.

Plot

Two years after the events of the first game, Max Payne (James McCaffrey) has been acquitted of the charges against him and reinstated in his old job as a detective for the NYPD, thanks to his connections to the Inner Circle secret society. The story is narrated from Max's perspective, who recalls the events of the past few days. The first flashback takes place in the hospital, where Max is recovering from a gunshot wound. Several assassins raid the hospital to try and kill him, but Max avoids them and makes his way to the morgue, where he finds the body of a woman he has recently killed. The game then goes back further in time, to a few nights prior.

While investigating a gunfight at a warehouse owned by his ally, Russian mobster Vladimir "Vlad" Lem (Jonathan Davis), Max encounters a group of hitmen called "the Cleaners", who raided the warehouse for guns. Max is also surprised to run into contract killer Mona Sax (Wendy Hoopes), who he thought had died two years ago. Max heads to Vlad's restaurant to question him about the raid, only to find him under attack by mobsters led by their mutual enemy, Vinnie Gognitti (Fred Berman). After saving Vlad, he claims that Vinnie, now the underboss of the Punchinello Crime Family, is trying to monopolize the black market arms trade and sees Vlad as a threat.

After evading an attack by the Cleaners in his apartment, Max tracks Mona to an abandoned funhouse and learns that the Cleaners are trying to eliminate anyone who knows about the Inner Circle. While tracking down Mona's contact within the Inner Circle, Max discovers that he has been killed by the Cleaners, and Mona is arrested by the NYPD for being a wanted suspect in the murder of a senator. While at the police station, Max overhears his colleague, Valerie Winterson (Jennifer Server), talking on the phone about Mona, moments before the Cleaners attack the station to kill Mona. She manages to escape and, after fighting off a Cleaner attack on her hideout, sets out to hunt down those responsible with Max's help.

Their search leads them to a construction site, which Max and Mona discover is being used as a base by the Cleaners. After killing most of them, Winterson arrives and holds Mona at gunpoint. Mona claims that Winterson is there to kill her, while Winterson insists that she is simply trying to arrest a fleeing fugitive. After several moments of consideration, Max fatally shoots Winterson, allowing Mona to escape. Before she dies, Winterson shoots Max, hospitalizing him. The game then returns to the earlier hospital scene, where Max eliminates the Cleaners trying to kill him and escapes. He decides to visit Senator Alfred Woden (John Braden), the leader of the Inner Circle, who reveals that Vlad is the leader and the one who hired the Cleaners to eliminate his opposition in order to take over both the Inner Circle and New York's criminal underworld.

Now aware of Vlad's deception, Max raids his restaurant, but finds that Vlad has already left to kill Vinnie. He also discovers that Winterson was Vlad's mistress and was secretly helping him. Max manages to save Vinnie from Vlad's men, and the two head to Mona's hideout to seek her help. However, Vlad ambushes them, killing Vinnie and injuring Max, though not before revealing that Mona is working for Woden and Woden was inadvertently responsible for causing the deaths of Max's family five years ago when he sent the Valkyr files to the District Attorney’s office to incriminate Nicole Horne (Jane Gennaro). After Mona rescues Max, the two head to Woden's mansion to save him from Vlad. After eliminating Vlad's men, Mona suddenly betrays Max and attempts to follow her orders to kill him, but finds herself unable to do so because of her feelings for him. Realizing this, Vlad shoots Mona and kills Woden, when the latter confronts him. Max fights Vlad as the mansion burns around them, and eventually kills him. As the police arrive at the scene, Max returns to Mona, who dies peacefully in his arms. Despite this, Max has come to terms with all the tragedy in his life, and is ready to move on. In an alternate ending unlocked on the highest difficulty, Mona survives, and she and Max kiss. The third game confirms Mona's death as the canon version.

Development
Take-Two Interactive issued a press release on 5 December 2001 that announced its acquisition of the Max Payne franchise from Remedy Entertainment and 3D Realms for US$10 million in cash and 970,000 shares of common stock, and its plans to release Max Payne 2. On 22 May 2002, Take-Two announced that they agreed to pay up to $8 million as incentive payments to 3D Realms and Remedy Entertainment to develop Max Payne 2. On 3 September 2003, Take-Two officially announced a release date of 15 October 2003 for the game.

Originally modeled in Max Payne after the game's writer Sam Lake, Max's appearance was remodeled after professional actor Timothy Gibbs for Max Payne 2; James McCaffrey returned as the voice of Max. The game's plot was written by Lake, who decided to write it as a "film noir love story", as he felt that it suited Max's persona the best. Lake hoped that the story would break new ground, noting, "At least it's a step into the right direction. I'd like nothing better than to see new and unexpected subject matters to find their way to games and stories told in games." Lake remarked that basic, archetypal film noir elements found in many classics of the genre "can go a long way" when telling a story, and gave examples that included a hostile, crime-ridden city; a story that takes place late at night with heavy rain; and a cynical, hard-boiled detective down on his luck. Lake considered writing a sequel to Max Payne an "art of its own". Since the setting and characters were already established, Lake decided that the primary goal of the sequel was "to keep what's good and fix what was not so good", and to take the story in surprising directions. The screenplay for the sequel ended up being three times longer than the one for Max Payne. Lake predicted that the more complex story would add to the game's replay value.

The story, sometimes told through in-game dialogue, is pushed forward with comic panels that play during cut scenes. The developers found comic panels to be more effective and less costly to use in the cut scenes than fully animated cinematics. They also noted that the graphic novel format allowed the player to interpret each panel for themselves, explaining "the nuances are there in the head of the reader, and it would be much harder to reach that level with in-game or even prerendered cinematics." The developers also found it easier to reorganize the comic panels if the plot needed to be changed while developing the game.

Max Payne 2 uses the same game engine as the one used in Max Payne, but with several significant upgrades. Even though the game only supports DirectX 8.1, the graphics in Max Payne 2 mimic those generated by DirectX 9 by making optimal use of effects such as reflection, refraction, shaders, and ghosting. The developers considered one particular scene in which effects are used well: When Max has lucid dreams, the screen appears fuzzy and out of focus. Since Max Payne, the polygon count (the number of polygons rendered per frame) has been increased, which smooths out the edges of character models. In addition, characters have a much greater range of expressions. Previously, Max had only one expression available; in Max Payne 2, he often smirks and moves his eyebrows to react to different scenarios.

The game uses the Havok physics engine, which the developers chose because it was "hands-down the best solution to our needs". They found that a dedicated physics engine was vital to create Max's combat scenes, which Max Payne was known for, "with increased realism and dramatic, movielike action". The physics engine made several situations seem more realistic. For example, when in combat, the player can take cover behind boxes; however, when enemy bullets impact the boxes, they will topple over, in which case the player will have to find another suitable object to use for cover. When an enemy is hidden behind a wall divider, the player can throw a grenade next to it to send the cover flying through the air, rendering the enemy unprotected. The Havok engine was tweaked to make weapons, bombs, and Molotov cocktails act more naturally, and the audio was updated to make them sound more realistic. The new physics engine allowed for certain actions that could not happen in Max Payne; boxes can be moved and follow the laws of gravitation, and explosion detonations make enemy bodies fall realistically.

The bullet time mode that Max Payne was known for was improved; the developers referred to it as "version 2.0". The mode, which allows Max to move in slow motion to react and kill enemies more easily, was enhanced to give Max a refill of a portion of the Bullet Time gauge, as well as slowing down the passage time even further, as Max moves further "into the zone" with each consecutive kill. This was done to encourage players to aggressively dive head-on into dangerous situations rather than crouching at a safe distance and waiting for enemies to come to them. A new reload animation was also introduced, which, when Max reloads while in Bullet Time, allows him to duck to avoid bullets, spin around to survey the combat situation, and briefly pause to give the player a moment to think of a strategy. Development tools were made available for Max Payne 2 by Rockstar Games and Remedy Entertainment to allow players to create modifications for the game. Modifications can perform several functions, such as the ability to add new weapons, skills, perspectives, surroundings, and characters.

Music composers Kärtsy Hatakka and Kimmo Kajasto returned to compose the game's soundtrack. It features cello performances by Apocalyptica member Perttu Kivilaakso. The game's end credits feature the song "Late Goodbye" by the band Poets of the Fall, the lyrics of which were based on a poem by Sam Lake. It was their first single and reached #14 on the Finnish Singles Chart as well as #1 on Radio Suomipop's Top 30 chart. It is referenced many times in the game, usually by characters singing or humming it.

Anti-piracy
When Rockstar Games released the game on Steam, they used a no-disc crack to bypass their originally included DRM.

Reception
Max Payne 2 received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, while the PS2 version received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator website Metacritic.

Steve Polak of the Australian The Daily Telegraph, who enjoyed the first Max Payne game, also praised Max Payne 2, calling it an "outstanding" game that "keeps alive the sense of atmosphere and engaging gunplay-oriented action that was so exciting in the first release." He lauded the game for better production values compared to the first game, including its more polished story, more professional scripts, and better acting and graphics. The complexity of Max's character was a welcomed element by Polak, who found that games often created heroes that were simplistic. The Sydney Morning Herald's Dan Toose described the game's experience as "brutal, yet beautiful gun-blazing gaming".

Jon Minifie of The New Zealand Herald appreciated the game's story, calling it an "entertainingly dark third-person shooter with a well-crafted, noir storyline". In particular, Minifie praised Remedy for what he deemed a successful port of the game to consoles, especially for the Xbox, noticing that the version features visuals that look similar to those on the PC. However, he found that the PlayStation 2 port was only "an okay job" that resulted in quality that was "considerably less easy on the eye", and asserted that it is outperformed by more powerful platforms. The Sunday Times's Steven Poole observed that Max Payne 2 does "exactly the same [things as the first game], only better." He found that enemies react convincingly to damage taken from bullets, thanks to the physics engine. Ultimately, however, Poole described the game as "entertaining but not earth-shattering".

The Toronto Sun's Steve Tilley, who believed that Remedy did a "killer job" on Max Payne 2, felt that the company kept what was great about the previous game, "while everything else has been tweaked, overhauled and juiced up". He was a fan of the bullet time from the first game, and therefore appreciated seeing it return in the sequel, with "even more impressive" visuals. Tilley found that the game's "lifelike physics engine" was easily its best aspect, and noted that while playing the game, he threw a grenade across a room, which resulted in an explosion that sent enemies flying through the air in a realistic fashion. In addition, Tilley applauded Remedy for listening to fan complaints and resolving issues from the previous game, including improved dream sequences in Max Payne 2. He was, however, disappointed with the general linearity of the game, and noted that players who are not interested in film noir themes will not enjoy them in Max Payne 2. Concluding, Tilley commented that the game "has enough polish, cinematic flair and outright mayhem to thrill those who like their Sopranos with a dash of John Woo and a touch of Frank Miller."

The game's action was praised by several reviewers. GameZone called it cinematic and action-packed, noting that the final scene was worthy of the big screen. Similarly, GameSpy described the action as "adrenaline-pumping", and considered it comparable to what was available in film. The story was both applauded and criticized. Tom McNamara of IGN enjoyed playing in the film noir setting and believed that it adds dramatic depth to Max and Mona's story, "somehow [making] what's going on more important and interesting. Wreaking havoc is nice, but it's great to also have a love interest complicating things, and Mona Sax is definitely up to the task." However, he was turned off by some of the "hammy" dialogue. In contrast, 1UP.com cited the final boss as an ending that inadequately completed an otherwise excellent game, and the Sunday Times' Poole called the story "pungently cheesy". Max Payne 2's length disappointed critics, including GameSpot and IGN, which complained about the short story. Toose of the Sydney Morning Herald was also critical of the short single-player experience, but found that the higher difficulty levels and special "survivor" modes helped improve the game's replay value.

Sales
Despite a positive reception, Max Payne 2 sold poorly, leading Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two Interactive to cite the "continued disappointing sales of Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne" as one of the causes for the company's reforecasted sales for 2004.

Awards
Max Payne 2 was the recipient of several industry awards, including Outstanding Art Direction at the Golden Satellite Awards 2004, Editors' Choice Awards from GamePro, IGN, GameSpy, and GameSpot, and Game of the Month from Game Informer.

During the 7th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Max Payne 2 for "Game of the Year", "Computer Game of the Year", "Computer Action/Adventure Game of the Year", "Console Action/Adventure Game of the Year", and "Outstanding Achievement in Character Performance - Male" for James McCaffrey's vocal portrayal of Max Payne.

Remake
In April 2022, Remedy announced that it is remaking Max Payne and Max Payne 2 on its Northlight Engine, with funding from Rockstar. The two remakes are set to be released as a compilation for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S.

title: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne


text:
Stephen Fearing

Stephen John Ging Fearing (born January 14 1963) is a Canadian roots/folk singer-songwriter. In addition to his solo career, Fearing co-founded Canadian roots-rock supergroup Blackie and the Rodeo Kings with Colin Linden and Tom Wilson. He is one half of the duo Fearing & White, with Irish artist Andy White.

Solo career
Stephen Fearing was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and raised in Dublin, Ireland. He returned to Canada in 1981 via Minneapolis, Minnesota, and began pursuing a career in music. Soon after his return, he released a cassette-only, self-titled album in 1986. He was then signed to the Canadian label Aural Tradition. In 1988 he released Out to Sea, which was co-produced by Steve Darke and Fearing in Vancouver. The album was followed by Blue Line, in 1991, which was produced in London by Clive Gregson and features B.J. Cole on pedal steel.

Soon after, Fearing was signed to True North Records. It was also at this time that he began working with manager Bernie Finkelstein. True North re-released Fearing's first two efforts Out to Sea and Blue Line. His first official release for the label was The Assassin's Apprentice, in 1994. Produced by Los Lobos' Steve Berlin, the album features musical contributions from Sarah McLachlan and Richard Thompson. It was nominated for Best Roots & Traditional Album at the 1995 Juno Awards.

In 1996, Fearing joined forces with Colin Linden and Tom Wilson to form Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. Originally teaming up to record a tribute album to the work of Ontario-born songwriter Willie P. Bennett, the band has gone on to write and record original material for a series of critically acclaimed albums.

Fearing returned to his solo career with 1998's Industrial Lullaby. The album features two co-writes with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings bandmate Tom Wilson. It also includes a collaboration with Willie P. Bennett on the track "Coryanna". The album went on to earn a Best Roots & Traditional Album nomination at the 1998 Juno Awards.

In 2000, Fearing released So Many Miles. Recorded by Colin Linden, the album compiles two nights of performances at Toronto's Tranzac and is made up of songs from his catalogue and a cover of Neil Young's "Thrasher", which he had originally recorded for the 1994 album Borrowed Tunes: A Tribute to Neil Young.

For his next album, That's How I Walk, Fearing enlisted the help of Colin Linden as a co-producer. The sessions for the album took place in Toronto and Nashville and featured the backing band of Gary Craig (drums and percussion), John Dymond (bass), Ben Riley (drums and percussion), and Roberto Occhipinti (upright bass). Richard Bell, Ian Thornley (Big Wreck), Leonard Podolak (Scruj MacDuk), and Shawn Colvin also made guest appearances. The album was mastered by John Whynot. Its cover photo was shot by Margaret Malandruccolo and features art direction from Michael Wrycraft. Considered one of Fearing's definitive works, it was nominated for Best Roots and Traditional Album at the 2003 Juno Awards.

His next album, Yellowjacket, saw him taking on the role of producer for the first time on his own. Scott Merritt engineered and mixed the session. The title track was written with Tom Wilson. The idea was spawned following a drive they shared from Nashville to Ontario while taking Yellow Jacket caffeine pills to stay awake. The album features performances from Dan Whiteley (Heartbreak Hill), Jeff Bird (Cowboy Junkies), backing vocalist Suzie Vinnick, Josh Finlayson, Colin Linden, Gary Craig, John Dymond and Richard Bell. It went on to earn Fearing his first solo Juno Award, taking home the 2007 Roots & Traditional Album of the Year: Solo award.

In 2009, Fearing returned with The Man Who Married Music, a best-of collection compiling songs from his back catalogue and featuring two new tracks ("The Big East West" and "No Dress Rehearsal"). Following the release of the album, he left True North Records after 20 years.

Between Hurricanes was released January 29, 2013, on LowdenProud Records. The album features 10 songs written or co-written by Fearing with a bonus cover of the Gordon Lightfoot song "Early Morning Rain". The record was coproduced by John Whynot, who has worked with Fearing on numerous Blackie and the Rodeo Kings albums.

In 2017 Fearing released his 10th solo album, Every Soul's a Sailor. The album was preceded by the single "Blowhard Nation", an anti-Trump protest song which was released in September 2016 prior to the controversial United States presidential election that year. Recorded primarily at Canterbury Music Company in July 2016, the record was co-produced by Fearing and David Travers-Smith. Gary Craig (drums) and John Dymond (bass), the acclaimed rhythm section for Blackie and The Rodeo Kings for over 20 years, performed on the album. Rose Cousins provided guest vocals for the tracks "Gone But Not Forgotten" and "Red Lights in the Rain", and co-producer Travers-Smith plays horns for "Gone But Not Forgotten". The album was named the 2017 Worldwide Album of the Year by Blues & Roots Radio and earned Fearing the 2017 Contemporary Singer of the Year award from the Canadian Folk Music Awards.

He followed up the acclaimed studio album with a limited-edition, vinyl-only release The Secret of Climbing on September 10, 2018. Fearing collaborated on the project with two music industry legends: the album's co-producer and veteran engineer Roy Gandy, co-founder of UK-based hi-fi manufacturer Rega Research, and international mastering engineer Ray Staff.

Fearing has also produced recordings for other artists, including Suzie Vinnick’s Juno-nominated Happy Here (2008), for which Fearing co-wrote most of the songs.

Fearing and White
In 2011, Fearing collaborated with longtime friend, Northern Ireland–born performer Andy White, to write and record a full-length album, Fearing & White. Produced by Scott Merritt at his Guelph studio, the Cottage, the record features thirteen songs, written over the course of the duo's ten-year friendship.

In 2014 the duo released a second album, Tea and Confidences, on LowdenProud Records.

title: Stephen Fearing


text:
Talk:Wardialing

Clarification of terminology
I thought that war dialing was essentially the same thing as what's described in the article on demon dialing — that is, dialing every number in an area to try to find listening computers. This article only mentions calling a single number repeatedly. Comments? —Arteitle 10:40, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC) (I should add that "war dialing", as it's now described in the article, wasn't depicted in the film WarGames, but "demon dialing" as described there was. In the film, David dials every number in Sunnyvale in sequence looking for a particular software company.) —Arteitle 10:45, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)

I object to the recent changes to war dialing and demon dialing. I can find numerous sites that define "war dialing" as dialing a range of numbers, and "demon dialing" as dialing the same number repeatedly (though sometimes it's given as a synonym for the former).   Unless someone can justify the recent flip-flopping of their definitions, I'm going to change them back. --Arteitle 07:51, Mar 15, 2004 (UTC)

I've gotten what seemed like wardialing calls in the last year, in the u.s. I'm puzzled why the article refers to this in the past tense. The term seems appropriate for current practices, e.g. junk faxers and automated telemarketing calls. See. -- Todd, Aug 15, 2005

Is there a reliable citation for war dialing predating the movie War Games ? What's the earliest verified description/incident? SJS 01:48, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
 * That's going to be difficult as I believe the term war dialing was not used until after the movie was released. However, in chapter 5 of Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution the author claims that Stewart_Nelson_(hacker) had, in the mid-50's, constructed a hardware autodialer and a gold box. It is also claimed that during his time at MIT he was a gifted "fone hacker" and that he, and presumably others, had used the AI Labs PDP-1 and PDP-6 computers to blue box. It is further claimed that he (they?) mapped out Bells nascent 800 toll-free service, and knowing the mindset of what the author calls first generation hackers, this would not have been done by hand when he had a perfectly good computer to do most of the work. From the descriptions given in the book it is highly likely that Nelson constructed the "phone interface" which allowed the PDP-6 to "talk" to the phone system. In conclusion it is almost certain that, at some point, he wrote at a minimum a high speed dialer if not a full blown war dialer.121.44.162.90 (talk) 02:30, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

BBS usage, early '90s
War dialing or wardialing is a method of automatically scanning telephone numbers using a modem, usually dialing every telephone number in a local area to find where computers or fax machines are available, then attempting to access them by guessing passwords.

The usage around the BBS scene I recall was that wardialing meant hunting for modems, without any implication of password guessing. Rather the intent was to find things like Corporate or little known BBSs that had free accounts, mail, forums, online games, or file areas; the free accounts might be useful in an area where there were too many callers and not enough BBS's -- if the main local BBSs were busy, users would settle for "any port in a storm"; having extra BBSs was also useful for diagnostics -- "I can't log in to FooBBS, anybody else have this problem?", etc.

There are ample usages of this sort on record. Therefore I'll modify the lead paragraph. --AC 19:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Legal Clarification Requested
I realise that these laws no longer exist but would:

"The popularity of wardialing in 1980s and 1990s prompted some states to enact legislation prohibiting the use of a device to dial telephone numbers without the intent of communicating with a person."

imply that deliberately and knowingly calling an automated helpline would have been illegal in these states during this period? 77.103.132.143 (talk) 14:34, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * After spending hours searching I can find no evidence that war dialing was ever illegal, at least not at the federal level in the United States. Federal law dealing with autodialers is covered by US Code Title 47 Chapter 5 Sub-Chapter II Part I Section 227 and is clearly intended to regulate telemarketing and also autodialing emergency numbers including but not limited to 911, health care facilities, fire departments, poison control centers, law enforcement, homes for the elderly or numbers that cause a fee to be incurred by the called party. As you've probably guessed you could quite easily violate this with a war dialer without meaning to. Colorado and Virginia have specific legislation intended to deal with telemarketing and harassment respectively but these are misdemeanors. The claim that it's illegal seems to be a hacker myth as I've repeatedly found it stated without any supporting evidence both in print (Calculated Bets by Steven Skiena and The Happy Hacker by Carolyn Meinel) and on the web (a search turns up many more) but every source appears to lead back to the wording of the alt.2600 FAQ which in turn leads directly to the reply to a letter published in 2600 Magazine (Spring 1990 Vol. 7 No. 1 page 27). Now it gets weird (and even more speculative), the tacked on bit about it being illegal in Colorado Springs,CO seems to be connected to Kevin Mitnick, the origin seems to be a claim from this LA Times article where a "friend" of Mitnick's, claims that in 1979 they broke into NORAD, which by coincidence is the setting for the movie WarGames, but I'm sure that's just coincidence.121.44.162.90 (talk) 02:30, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I looked into the deal with 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(a)(8) (given as (a)(7) on article, the numbering is has changed since then). I was surprised to find out this is actually correct. This is discussed in Federal Register Vol. 68 No. 143, Rules and Regulations Implementing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, Paragraph 98 where the FTC maintains that war dialing is indeed prohibited. This rule was determined to be valid in Federal court. I haven't been able to find a secondary source for any of this. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:20, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Simpsons
Doesn't Homer in one episode have a machine that calls every number in Springfield? abelson (talk) 21:47, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Lisa's Date with Density- an autodialer. There seems to be some overlap in the terms. Nevard (talk) 04:15, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm sort of, but that specific use is already covered extensively by the Robocall entry. Personally I consider demon dialing, war dialing, robocalling, predictive dialing, outbound IVR etc. as specific uses of an autodialer differing in purpose and implementation. I understand what you're saying by overlap but originally War dialing referred specifically to using a computer program to control a modem for the purpose of identifying phone numbers that have a modem connected to them. This definition changed over time as both modems and dialers got more advanced and people thought of new uses for the technique, a more modern example would be for penetration testing of SCADA systems.121.44.162.90 (talk) 02:30, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

POV nonsense
This article is a train wreck. "Hackers and crackers using war dialers" please. Why, because it has the word "war" in it?

title: Talk:Wardialing


text:
Talk:Porsche Cayenne

Advertisement?
Several sections of this article are written as though they were an advertisement (i'm not sure how to put up the box saying so), most notably the silly "performance" section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.88.97.52 (talk) 19:55, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Cleaned up
The "Controversy" section was an unsourced, POV soapbox. The points made are trivial and opinionated. The opinion blurbs are unreferenced. The "Popular Culture" also was deleted. The use of cars in movies and by celebrities is so trivial that it's a waste of space. J M Rice (talk) 03:24, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Copyright Violations on this page
The Cayenne Turbo text quoted below is copied by user Autostream from Edmunds.com without citation. ''Atop the range sits the Cayenne Turbo. Apart from the two turbochargers (one per bank) and a lowered compression ratio of 10.5:1, the 4.8-liter V8 is similar to that of the Cayenne S except for an output of 500 hp (370 kW) and 516 ft·lbf (700 N·m) of torque. Porsche's height-adjustable air suspension and PASM adaptive damping are standard, along with fancier instruments, bigger brakes, bigger wheels, navigation/communication system, Servotronic steering, 12-channel parking radar, and a center locking differential w/optional rear locker.'' http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Drives/FirstDrives/articleId=119520 —Preceding

Several other sections added by this user appear to be from the same Edmunds article.

unsigned comment added by Springee (talk • contribs) 01:32, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the copy-paste section due to copyright concerns. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Springee (talk • contribs) 14:21, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Advertising Tone
The article lacks impartiality, from start to finish. Much of the writing seems highly biased in favor of the vehicle, and much of the writing seems conjectural. The tone of the article is completely off-base for a reference article. Notably, the article completely avoids the very real co-development of the Cayenne with the VW Taureg. 842U (talk) 04:26, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

It also attempts to minimize the involvement of VW in the production of the body. The author is attempting to distance the Cayenne from it's VW platform in some elitist effort to somehow protect it's exclusivity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.74.29 (talk) 09:47, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

doesn't look like Porsche
The only Porsche car that doesn't look like a Porsche —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.164.229.33 (talk) 18:55, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

 * I dunno. To me it looks an awful lot like the Porsche Cayenne.-→ $JJOlsen$  00:22, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Cayenne Turbo S Price
Just a small question. How much (US$) does the Cayenne Turbo S cost for purchase? JMBZ-12 (talk) 18:37, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Wheel Articulation?
The image with the caption "Electronic Stabilizer dcoupling demonstrating extra wheel articulation." seems poorly chosen. Wheel articulation is the ability to keep all 4 wheels on the ground, which the porsche is clearly not doing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.152.151.185 (talk) 06:13, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Is it really made by them?
I heard from a friend in the car industry that the Cayenne is not really "Porsche" e.g. they are outsourcing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.124.157.231 (talk) 06:51, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Visually shorter and smaller?
The article says: "The 2011 Porsche Cayenne is visually shorter and smaller than its predecessors". This sounds like POV, as the dimensions are all bigger. Am not sure if we can base "visually" on facts while facts disagree with it... Vincent Lextrait (talk) 00:07, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Safety - no documentation
Can anyone find out why the Cayenne has no rating on either http://www.iihs.org, http://www.euroncap.com , or www.safercar.gov ? Or where to find such safety approval documentation? Although not tested in the USA, it must have been tested somewhere? TGCP (talk) 14:29, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

What's done in Bratislava and what in Leipzig
Cayenne is almost fully assembled in Bratislava. Including interior. What is missing is the engine which is fitted in Leipzig. B00c (talk) 13:39, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Mitte district disaster?
From the third gen section:

"On September 6, 2019 a late-model Porsche Cayenne drove at high speed onto a crowded sidewalk in the Mitte district of Berlin, Germany, killing four people, include a 3- to 4-year-old child."

What relevance, if any, does this have to the article? While this is an unspeakable tragedy to be sure, I'm not sure there is any reason to reference it in this article, especially in the opening of the third generation section. BigBadWaffl3z (talk) 13:53, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

title: Talk:Porsche Cayenne