text:
Talk:Rectifier

Reservoir capacitor → Rectifier#Rectifier smoothing filter
Reservoir capacitor has been tagged to merge with the section of this article Rectifier. I am not the nominator, so my fan club can relax. However, there was no discussion section created for this proposed merge, so here it is. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:04, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Support - any unique content can be added here, no need for a separate article. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:04, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Support - A minor usage that certainly does not merit its own article, the minimal content could be merged to this article, Capacitor, or Power supply. -- Chetvorno TALK 21:35, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

This was sloppily proposed and executed, making this merge-action time-consuming to follow: So, the term reservoir capacitor is not defined now. wbm1058 (talk) 15:11, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Proposal made by @ 04:07, 11 November 2017
 * Rectifier was not initially tagged for this. Version at time of proposal, last updated 10:12, 9 November 2017: there is no section header Rectifier smoothing filter in that version; indeed the term "rectifier smoothing filter" doesn't even appear
 * was placed on at 21:37, 14 November 2017
 * redirected and merged Reservoir capacitor to @ 05:38, 20 November 2017, even though there was no such section header
 * Content was actually merged to the Rectifier output smoothing section
 * The lead sentence of the former article said: A reservoir capacitor is a capacitor that is used to smooth the pulsating DC from an AC rectifier.
 * The only usage of the term in the current Rectifier article is in the sentence "Transformer resistance modifies the reservoir capacitor waveform, changes the peak voltage, and introduces regulation issues."
 * Oh, I see. It says "In its simplest form this can be just a capacitor (also called a filter, reservoir, or smoothing capacitor)". I missed that earlier. wbm1058 (talk) 23:54, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The lead of Filter capacitor says: "Filter capacitors are not the same as reservoir capacitors, the tasks the two perform are different, albeit related." – i.e. different applications of capacitors. wbm1058 (talk) 00:18, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
 * This edit makes no sense to me: "The reservoir filter capacitor releases its stored energy during the part of the AC cycle when the AC source does not supply any power, that is, when the AC source changes its direction of flow of current." Common sense meanings of the words – a reservoir stores energy, not a filter. A filter separates undesired "B" from a mixture of "A" and "B" to give you the desired pure "A". wbm1058 (talk) 00:48, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Filter capacitor → Rectifier#Rectifier output smoothing
Filter capacitor has been tagged to merge with Rectifier, with the nominator's comment "Unsourced junk article, along with Reservoir capacitor.'' I am not the nominator but I'm starting the discussion section which was not created when the article was tagged. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:04, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Support - very little non-redundant content to merge here, the rest of the article is just a list of capacitor applications which should be discussed at Capacitor. --Wtshymanski (talk) 20:04, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Support - I agree with the above, should be merged into Capacitor. Should also be a little more about them in this article and Power supply. -- Chetvorno TALK 21:35, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * My view is that the Capacitor article is too large (at 99.8kb), and that a better target would therefore be a more specific article: Applications of capacitors. Klbrain (talk) 14:31, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Agree, that would be better. --ChetvornoTALK 21:07, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Switched the templates to reflect this. Klbrain (talk) 08:37, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I support merging into Applications of capacitors. A bit confusing that this discussion is here, though.-- Theodore Kloba (☎) 19:19, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

 * Oppose  This is tagged on the filter capacitor article as merge into applications of capacitors. I oppose both.  We're WP:NOTPAPER, duplication and overlap just isn't a problem for us. Keep all of them. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:23, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure why you're opposing the merge of an unreferenced article which duplicates the content of Applications of capacitors. As you know, there is an important distinction between what can be done, and what should be done, and the top 2 reasons for a merge are duplication and overlap. Given the content I therefore maintain my support for either merging to Applications of capacitors or simply deleting and redirecting the title to Rectifier. Klbrain (talk) 08:31, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Ripple (electrical)#Ripple voltage ⟶ Rectifier
Tag was placed at but no corresponding tag was placed at. No discussion was started. – wbm1058 (talk) 02:29, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I replaced the merge template with a hatnote. A bit annoyed at the merge-tag-bombing here, with no followup by the proposer. More care should be taken with merging technical content. wbm1058 (talk) 10:42, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Filter and reservoir capacitors
You now have links to both reservoir capacitor and filter capacitor which go to different places. The article claims they are synonyms so there is no justification in having two different links (actually, we have three because there is the pre-existing smoothing capacitor. I would also challenge the notion that the term filter capacitor is applied to this capacitor.  I agree that capacitor-input filter is a term, but that doesn't mean the capacitor is called a filter capacitor.  The filter follows the reservoir capacitor, it is not part of it.  I read the term to mean that the filter takes its input from the reservoir capacitor which is doing a somewhat different job to a traditional frequency filter. SpinningSpark 10:36, 19 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I was wondering about this myself as well, but since someone added filter capacitor to the list, I didn't want to remove the term. If the term filter capacitor is (or was) actually used as a synonym to the other terms in RS we may need to disambiguate it to avoid the confusion.
 * The reason why I added those links was basically to "catch" their usage in the various articles and see if a common denominator can be derived to eventually change the redirects into articles properly defining them and crosslink to the other definitions to disambiguate them and let the subtle differences stand out better.
 * Personally, I wouldn't call it a filter capacitor (Filterkondensator) in this application either... Like you I would use the term only in conjunction with traditional frequency filters, but who knows...
 * In German, the output capacitor of a power supply is called a Glättungskondensator (lit. smoothing capacitor) or Siebkondensator (lit. sieve capacitor -> and sieving comes semantically quite close to filtering, so filter capacitor might not be improper use as well) when the focus is on the smoothing of the rectifier output or other variable-amplitude voltage source, neclecting a possibly variable load. However, if the focus is on the capacitor's use of short-term energy storage & supply it would be called a Pufferkondensator (lit. buffer capacitor) or, rarely and only for larger capacitors, a Reservoirkondensator (lit. reservoir capacitor). I see that in English the terms decoupling capacitor and bypass capacitor are used as well - whereas I would use those only when referring to the parallel capacitors located near the load (in German they would be called Stützkondensator).
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 12:52, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

"AC/DC adapter" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect AC/DC adapter and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. fgnievinski (talk) 05:38, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Rectifier


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Paul Twomey

Paul Twomey is an Australian businessman and public policy executive. Twomey is co-founder of STASH, the secure digital storage and content sharing company. He is one of the founding figures of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international non-profit organization that coordinates many of the key functions of the global Internet. Twomey was the original chair of its Governmental Advisory Committee (1998-2003) and CEO (2003–10). A former McKinsey & Company consultant (1989–94) he was a senior executive at the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade 1994–97) and the chief executive of the Australian National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE 1998–2000), and CEO of Argo Pacific, a high-level Internet and cybersecurity advisory firm. He serves as the founding chairman of the Cybergreen Institute, a global non-profit organization that helps improve the health of the global cyber ecosystem.

Twomey was appointed chief executive officer of the National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) in 1997, a Commonwealth Government unit responsible for developing Internet policy. His involvement with ICANN began at this time. Subsequently, he chaired the ICANN Government Advisory Committee, which served as the organisation's liaison with world governments. Following his departure from NOIE, Twomey created a consultancy with Ira Magaziner (Domestic Policy Adviser to former US President Bill Clinton) called Argo P@cific. He continued to serve on the ICANN GAC until November 2002, through an ongoing posting as external advisor to Australia's Commonwealth Government.

On 27 March 2003 he was elected to the position of CEO at ICANN. In an indication of the importance of ICANN's role, the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times have described Twomey as “The Internet’s Chief Operating Officer.” On 2 March 2009, during the opening ceremony of ICANN's 34th international meeting in Mexico City, Twomey mentioned that he would be leaving ICANN in June while remaining as Senior President until the end of the year. His name has recently been mentioned in relation to the Australian Government's proposed National Broadband Network.

He is a board member of the Atlantic Council of the United States; the founding chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on the Future of the Internet; a commissioner of the Global Information Infrastructure Commission; and was a member of the advisory board of the United Nations’ Digital He@lth Initiative. He serves as the founding chairman of the Cybergreen Institute, a global non-profit organization that helps improve the health of the global cyber ecosystem. Paul Twomey is also a distinguished fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation where he focuses on Internet governance, e-commerce and cyber security.

Twomey received the 2017 Communications Quality & Reliability (CQR) Chairman's Award from IEEE's technical committee.

Twomey holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from University of Queensland, a Master of Arts from Pennsylvania State University (Political Science and International Relations) and a PhD from Cambridge University (International Relations).

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

title: Paul Twomey


text: User talk:68.10.112.38

title: User talk:68.10.112.38


text:
Zurab Khizanishvili

Zurab Khizanishvili (ზურაბ ხიზანიშვილი; born 6 October 1981) is a Georgian football coach and former player who is the assistant manager of Georgia U21. A defender, he was the most recent Georgian footballer to play in the Premier League.

Early career
Khizanishvili started his career at Dinamo Tbilisi where he remained for just one season, before joining FC Tbilisi to improve his chances of playing regular first team football.

In 1999, he was on the move again, joining his previous two clubs' city rivals Lokomotiv Tbilisi. Khizanishvili's form at Lokomotiv piqued the interest of some of Europe's top clubs, though the player's latter days at the club were marred by injury. Khizanishvili was eventually released after his contract with Lokomotiv was terminated.

Scotland
In March 2001, Khizanishvili joined Dundee, having had unsuccessful trials at Arsenal, Fulham and West Ham United.

He quickly made an impact at Dens Park, alerting fellow Scottish Premier League team Rangers, whom Khizanishvili joined on a Bosman transfer in July 2003 as a replacement for Blackburn Rovers-bound defender Lorenzo Amoruso.

England
Despite making 35 appearances in his first campaign at Ibrox, Khizanishvili gradually fell out of favour and, on 31 August 2005, he was allowed to move on loan for the rest of the season to Blackburn in the English FA Premier League. During his loan spell at Blackburn he scored once in the league, in a 2–0 home win over Manchester City, and once in the League Cup in a 3–1 win over Huddersfield Town.

On 10 April 2006, he signed a permanent deal with Blackburn Rovers in a deal rumoured to be worth around about £500,000. He was a key part of Blackburn's team in the 2006-07 season, starting more than half the matches as the club competed domestically and in the UEFA Cup. Khizanishvili struggled to hold down a regular starting position in the rest of Mark Hughes' reign as manager.

Under Paul Ince and Sam Allardyce he also failed to break into the first team on a consistent basis. His first appearance of the 2009–10 campaign came on 25 August, when he started the League Cup 2nd Round tie against Gillingham at Priestfield Stadium, playing the full 90 minutes alongside Gael Givet in a 3–1 win. On 17 September 2009 Khizanishvili joined Championship team Newcastle United on loan in a three-month deal and returned on 19 December. On 25 January 2010, he signed for Reading on loan for the remainder of the 2009–10 season.

On 31 August 2010, he rejoined Reading on a season long loan for the 2010–11 season and was handed the number 15 shirt at the Madejski Stadium. On 13 March 2011, Khizanishvili completed the full 90 minutes against Manchester City at Eastlands in a 1–0 FA Cup quarter-final loss. On 30 May 2011, he started the Championship play-off final against Swansea City. Khizanishvili was booked after 12 minutes and then conceded a penalty kick after 20 minutes, due to a clumsy challenge on winger Nathan Dyer and Reading went on to lose 4–2. Khizanishvili ended his second loan spell with Reading having made 29 appearances in all competitions, including 24 league outings.

Turkey
After his release from Blackburn, Khizanishvili joined Kayserispor, where he played for three seasons.

Azerbaijan
In June 2015, Khizanishvili signed a six-month contract with Azerbaijan Premier League side Inter Baku PIK.

International career
Khizanishvili played 93 matches for Georgia national team. He scored his only goal against Moldova on 6 June 2009.

Coaching career
After he retired from football in the summer 2017, Khizanishvili was appointed as the assistant manager of Gia Geguchadze at the Georgian U-21 national team.

Personal life
Khizanishvili is married to the Georgian model Salome Ghviniashvili and they have three children. He is the son of former USSR international defender Nodar Khizanishvili.

Honours
Rangers
 * League Cup: 2004–05
 * Scottish Premier League: 2004–05

Individual
 * SFWA Young Player of the Year: 2002–03

title: Zurab Khizanishvili


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Viking Hockey

Viking Hockey is an ice hockey team based in Stavanger, Norway. The club was founded in 1998, replacing Viking IK, which had folded in 1996. They played one season in the GET-ligaen, 1998-99. The team colors are blue and they play home matches in Siddishallen.

Notable players

 * Rob Schistad
 * Kyle McDonough, inspiration for the title character in Happy Gilmore.
 * Tore Vikingstad

title: Viking Hockey


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Jean R. Yawkey

Jean Remington Yawkey (January 24, 1909 – February 26, 1992) was the wife of Tom Yawkey and owner of the Boston Red Sox from 1976 to her death in 1992.

Biography
Jean Yawkey was born Jean Hollander in Brooklyn, New York. She grew up in Freeport, Long Island, and was a New York City fashion model for ten years. In December 1944, she married Tom Yawkey in Georgetown, South Carolina; both had previous marriages that ended in divorce. During World War II, she was active with the Red Cross.

Tom Yawkey had bought the Boston Red Sox in 1933. Following his death in 1976, Jean Yawkey was chairwoman of the board of directors of the JRY Corporation, the majority owner and general partner of the Red Sox, until her death.

In 1983, Jean Yawkey became a director of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, holding the distinction of being the first woman elected to the board.

In 1992, Jean Yawkey died in Boston at age 83. In total, the Yawkeys owned (solely, or with partners) and operated the team for 59 years. Jean Yawkey was inducted to the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame in 1995.

Philanthropy
Jean Yawkey had a long association with the Jimmy Fund/Dana–Farber Cancer Institute as a trustee and for a period as chair. She was a supporter of the Tara Hall Home for Boys in South Carolina. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Yawkey Family Inn in Brookline, Massachusetts, a temporary home for families of patients undergoing transplant surgery in Boston-area hospitals. She was also a trustee of Yawkey Foundation I.

Jean Yawkey and the Yawkey Foundations established scholarship funds at Yale University, Boston College, and Boston College High School. She was a supporter of the Jackie Robinson Scholarship Program and supported several other educational institutions to provide minority students and others with scholarship aid.

In 2003, the Yawkey Foundation awarded $5 million to Emmanuel College in Boston for construction of the Jean Yawkey Center, a student center, dining hall, gym and fitness center.

Boston Red Sox
The team's most successful season during Jean Yawkey's ownership came in 1986, when the Red Sox reached the World Series, losing in seven games to the New York Mets.

title: Jean R. Yawkey


text:
Lasker–DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award

Lasker–DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award is one of four annual awards presented by the Lasker Foundation. The Lasker–DeBakey award is given to honor outstanding work for the understanding, diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and cure of disease. This award was renamed in 2008 in honor of Michael E. DeBakey. It was previously known as the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research.

List of past winners

 * 1946 John Friend Mahoney, Karl Landsteiner (posthumously), Alexander S. Wiener, Philip Levine
 * 1947 Thomas Francis Jr.
 * 1948 not awarded
 * 1949 Max Theiler, Edward C. Kendall, Philip S. Hench
 * 1950 Georgios Papanikolaou
 * 1951 Élise L'Esperance, Catharine Macfarlane, William G. Lennox, Frederic A. Gibbs
 * 1952 Conrad A. Elvehjem, Frederick Sumner McKay, H. Trendley Dean
 * 1953 Paul Dudley White
 * 1954 Alfred Blalock, Helen B. Taussig, Robert E. Gross
 * 1955 C. Walton Lillehei, Morley Cohen (de), Herbert E. Warden, Richard L. Varco, Hoffmann-La Roche Research Laboratories, Squibb Institute for Medical Research, Edward H. Robitzek, Irving Selikoff, Walsh McDermott, Carl Muschenheim
 * 1956 Louis N. Katz, Jonas E. Salk, V. Everett Kinsey, Arnall Patz
 * 1957 Rustom Jal Vakil, Nathan S. Kline, Robert H. Noce, Henri Laborit, Pierre Deniker, Heinz E. Lehmann, Richard E. Shope
 * 1958 Robert W. Wilkins
 * 1959 John Holmes Dingle, Gilbert Dalldorf, Robert Edward Gross
 * 1960 Karl Paul Link, Irving S. Wright, Edgar V. Allen
 * 1961 not awarded
 * 1962 Joseph E. Smadel
 * 1963 Michael E. DeBakey, Charles Huggins
 * 1964 Nathan S. Kline
 * 1965 Albert B. Sabin
 * 1966 Sidney Farber
 * 1967 Robert Allan Phillips
 * 1968 John Heysham Gibbon
 * 1969 George C. Cotzias
 * 1970 Robert A. Good
 * 1971 Edward D. Freis
 * 1972 Min Chiu Li, Roy Hertz, Denis Burkitt, Joseph H. Burchenal, V. Anomah Ngu, John L. Ziegler, Edmund Klein, Emil Frei III, Emil J. Freireich, James F. Holland, Donald Pinkel, Paul P. Carbone, Vincent T. DeVita, Jr., Eugene J. Van Scott, Isaac Djerassi, C. Gordon Zubrod
 * 1973 Paul M. Zoll, William B. Kouwenhoven
 * 1974 John Charnley
 * 1975 Godfrey N. Hounsfield, William Oldendorf
 * 1976 Raymond P. Ahlquist, James W. Black
 * 1977 Inge Edler, C. Hellmuth Hertz
 * 1978 Michael Heidelberger, Robert Austrian, Emil C. Gotschlich
 * 1979 not awarded
 * 1980 Cyril A. Clarke, Ronald Finn, Vincent Freda, John G. Gorman, William Pollack
 * 1981 Louis Sokoloff
 * 1982 Roscoe O. Brady, Elizabeth F. Neufeld
 * 1983 F. Mason Sones, Jr.
 * 1984 Paul C. Lauterbur
 * 1985 Bernard Fisher
 * 1986 Myron Essex, Robert C. Gallo, Luc Montagnier
 * 1987 Mogens Schou
 * 1988 Vincent P. Dole
 * 1989 Étienne-Émile Baulieu
 * 1990 not awarded
 * 1991 Yuet Wai Kan
 * 1992 not awarded
 * 1993 Donald Metcalf
 * 1994 John Allen Clements
 * 1995 Barry J. Marshall
 * 1996 Porter Warren Anderson, Jr., David H. Smith (de), John B. Robbins, Rachel Schneerson
 * 1997 Alfred Sommer
 * 1998 Alfred G. Knudson Jr., Peter C. Nowell, Janet Rowley
 * 1999 David W. Cushman, Miguel Ondetti
 * 2000 Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton
 * 2001 Robert Edwards
 * 2002 Willem J. Kolff, Belding H. Scribner
 * 2003 Marc Feldmann, Ravinder N. Maini
 * 2004 Charles Kelman
 * 2005 Alec Jeffreys, Edwin Southern
 * 2006 Aaron T. Beck
 * 2007 Alain Carpentier, Albert Starr
 * 2008 Akira Endo
 * 2009 Brian Druker, Nicholas Lydon, and Charles Sawyers
 * 2010 Napoleone Ferrara
 * 2011 Tu Youyou
 * 2012 Roy Calne, Thomas E. Starzl
 * 2013 Graeme Milbourne Clark, Ingeborg Hochmair, Blake S. Wilson
 * 2014 Alim-Louis Benabid, Mahlon R. DeLong
 * 2015 James P. Allison
 * 2016 Ralf F. W. Bartenschlager, Charles M. Rice, Michael J. Sofia
 * 2017 Douglas R. Lowy, John T. Schiller
 * 2018 John B. Glen
 * 2019 H. Michael Shepard, Dennis J. Slamon, Axel Ullrich
 * 2020 not awarded
 * 2021 Katalin Karikó, Drew Weissman
 * 2022 Yuk Ming Dennis Lo
 * 2023 James G. Fujimoto, David Huang, Eric A. Swanson


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Richard Schirrmann

Richard Schirrmann (15 May 1874 – 14 December 1961) was a German teacher and founder of the first hostel.

Early life and education
Schirrmann was born in Grunenfeld, Province of Prussia (now Gronówko, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship). His father, August Schirrmann was a teacher.

Career
Richard Schirrmann became a teacher in 1895 after passing his teacher's examination in Karalene, near Insterburg, and was used as a teacher in the Kirchschule Königshöhe in Lötzen, then in Schrombehnen in Pr. Eylau. He took every opportunity to hold outdoors lessons. In 1903, he was transferred to Nette-Schule in Altena, Province of Westphalia where he met Wilhelm Münker, who later became his partner.

In August 1909, after a stormy school camping trip, Schirrmann proposed the idea of affordable youth travel gaining significant support and opened a makeshift hostel for hikers in his school.

On 1st of June 1912, in Altena Castle, he opened the first official hostel now used as museum.

World War I
During the World War I, Schirrmann served in a regiment holding a position on the Bernhardstein, one of the Vosges Mountains – separated from the French troops by a narrow No man's land, which he described as "strewn with shattered trees, the ground ploughed up by shellfire, a wilderness of earth, tree-roots and tattered uniforms".

Schirrmann described a Western Front Christmas Truce in December 1915: "When the Christmas bells sounded in the villages of the Vosges behind the lines... something fantastically unmilitary occurred. German and French troops spontaneously made peace and ceased hostilities; they visited each other through disused trench tunnels, and exchanged wine, cognac, and cigarettes for Westphalian black bread, biscuits, and ham. This suited them so well that they remained good friends even after Christmas was over."

Military discipline was soon restored, but Schirrmann pondered over the incident wondering whether "thoughtful young people of all countries could be provided with suitable meeting places where they could get to know each other". The war made him an even stronger proponent of hostels believing that hostels would be "bridges of peace" to foster international understanding.

Post War
In 1919, he founded German Youth Hostel Association. In 1922, he retired from teaching to focus entirely on hostels.

In 1925, he founded the children's village "Staumühle" on a former military training ground near Paderborn. Until 1931, every year during the summer months, he organized a school camp.

From 1933 to 1936, he served as President of the International Youth Hostelling Association (now Hostelling International), until the Government of Nazi Germany forced him to resign while the hostels were put under control of the Hitler Youth. After World War II, he played a key role in rebuilding the German association, and was recognized the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz) in 1952.

In 1946, after World War II, he made history by becoming the first German civilian to enter private plane with the help of his American friend, att

her, but their marriage ended. Beginning in 1937, he lived in Gravenwiesbach, Taunus where he died in 1962.in 1929 due to Gertrud's lack of support for his endeavours. He then got married to Elisabeth who shared his passion, and between 1942 to an unspecified date, he had six children with her.

title: Richard Schirrmann


text:
User:Grutter

My new account is: User:GPRutter

Useful internal links:

External link:
 * Olem - blog My blog, including a PDF version of the thesis.

title: User:Grutter


text:
Battlefield (video game series)

Battlefield is a series of first-person shooter video games developed by Swedish company EA DICE and is published by American company Electronic Arts. The series mainly focuses on online multiplayer, with gameplay taking place across large maps, and emphasizes teamwork and combined arms warfare.

The inaugural installment, Battlefield 1942, was released for Microsoft Windows and OS X computers in 2002. Since then, the series' installments have been played by more than 50 million players worldwide as of August 2012.

Gameplay
Battlefield series games usually focus on large-scale, online multiplayer battles. Playing in squads has become a major element of games in the series. Apart from infantry, tanks, airplanes, and other vehicles may participate in these battles.

Since Battlefield 2, the series centrally recorded online stats for each player, allowing users to receive rank promotions and weapon unlocks based on their performance as well as awards such as medals, ribbons, and pins.

A class system is present within all the Battlefield games. Each class features a different type of primary weapon along with different equipment, differentiating roles on the battlefield.

2008's Battlefield: Bad Company, in addition to expanding to the series to consoles, introduced full single-player campaigns with more fleshed-out storylines. It was also the first game to use the studio-developed game engine, Frostbite, which introduced almost fully destructible environments; a feature that has since become one of the most well-known staples of the series.

The ability to engage other players in melee combat with a knife has been present in Battlefield games, but since Battlefield 2142, the series has included an award of dog tags for each player killed using a knife.

Development history
Battlefield 1942 was released on September 10, 2002, using the Refractor game engine, and set in World War II. It introduced the "Conquest" gameplay mode, in which players fought for "control points" throughout the map. Two expansion packs were released.

Battlefield Vietnam, released in 2004, moved the setting to the Vietnam War, and was built on an updated Refractor engine with various gameplay improvements, such as the ability to fire personal weapons while seated in vehicles, and visualizing dense foliage.

The 2005 release Battlefield 2 takes place in the modern day, depicting a war between the United States and China and the fictional Middle Eastern Coalition (MEC). Despite requiring numerous patches due to a large number of bugs and glitches in the game upon its release, it was a large commercial success, selling more than 2,250,000 copies worldwide, by July 2006. One expansion pack, Special Forces, which added Russia, exclusive missions, and new weapons and gadgets, and two booster packs, Armored Fury (adding three new battles in the USA) and Euro Force (adding the European Union), were also released. A similar game called Battlefield 2: Modern Combat was released for consoles, with a larger single player mode but limited online play.

Battlefield 2142 was released in 2006, taking place during a global ice age in the 22nd century. While most of it is graphically similar to Battlefield 2, it introduced a variety of equipment to unlock and battles between two giant "Titan" airships. The Northern Strike expansion pack was later released, adding new maps, vehicles, and a new game mode. Its use of in-game advertising was controversial among players and not well received.

Battlefield: Bad Company, released in 2008, is set in a near-future war between the United States and Russia, and follows a US Army company's escapades and their search for hidden gold. This new Battlefield game had a variety of vehicles for land, air and sea. It had a new destruction system that allowed the player to break and destroy environments, based on a new game engine named Frostbite, which replaced the Refractor engine used in earlier releases (with the exception of Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, which used RenderWare).

In 2009, EA released two download-only games, Battlefield Heroes, a free-to-play Refractor 2 engine game, supported by advertising and micropayments and Battlefield 1943, a Frostbite engine game, released in July 2009, for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and was scheduled for release in Q1 2010, for PCs, but was cancelled.

In 2010, a sequel to Battlefield: Bad Company, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, was released, involving "B" Company's search for an electromagnetic pulse weapon. It features a larger multiplayer than its predecessor Bad Company, with updated graphics and realistic effects (e.g. bullet-drop). The game introduced the rush game mode and brought in weapons. It features a "VIP" system of content distribution where player with VIP codes gain early access to new maps. DICE also released an expansion for Bad Company 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam, setting the game in the Vietnam War.

Battlefield 3 was announced in 2009, and in 2010 it was confirmed that gamers who pre-ordered Medal of Honor Limited Edition would receive Battlefield 3 forty-eight hours before the open beta was released. On February 4, 2011, the first teaser trailer for the game was revealed, with a preliminary release in the Fall of 2011. Among the features that remain in the game are Jets and the ability to go prone. The game allows 64 (on the PC) players as in all previous Battlefield titles, though the consoles allow for 24-player matches. The Battlefield 3 Beta was released on September 29, 2011. Battlefield 3 was released on October 25, 2011 and has received high review scores and has received awards from IGN.

On November 5, 2010, EASY Studios announced a follow-up to its free-to-play Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield Play4Free. EASY develops the free-to-play variants of Battlefield. Its latest offering gives players the same free-to-play pricing structure of Heroes, while still offering a more serious, core Battlefield experience (as opposed to Heroes' lighthearted, cartoon-styled environment). Battlefield Play4Free went into open beta on April 4, 2011.

Battlefield 4 was announced on March 26, 2013. On July 17, 2012, it was announced that players who pre-order Medal of Honor: Warfighter would receive access to a Battlefield 4 beta. The beta for the game began on October 1 and ended on October 15 with a full release on October 29, 2013.

Information about the next entry in the series, Battlefield Hardline, was leaked on May 27, 2014, and officially unveiled on June 9, 2014, during E3. The game was developed by Visceral Games and, unlike previous installments in the franchise, is centered around a cops-and-robbers theme.

Battlefield: Bad Company 3 was an upcoming entry into the series, a follow-up to 2010's Battlefield: Bad Company 2. General Manager of DICE, Karl-Magnus Troedsson stated in a 2014 interview with Eurogamer that the game is not in active development as the studio doesn't know what exactly fans loved about the series as there has never been a clear line of the matter and they do not want to risk destroying the series. Despite this, DICE has made it clear that they will be developing Bad Company 3 at some point.

In July 2015, CFO of EA Blake Jorgensen announced a new Battlefield title would be released in 2016. This was followed up by Dan Vaderlind, EA DICE Development Director, announcing that since Star Wars Battlefront has been released, he will now be focused on the upcoming Battlefield title. On May 6, 2016, Battlefield 1 was officially announced, with an official reveal trailer on YouTube, and was released on October 21, 2016.

In a May 2018 live reveal event it was confirmed that it the next installment would be a World War II game after several leaks suggested it would be set during this period, with the title revealed as Battlefield V. Battlefield V was released later that year on November 20, 2018 while also offering certain players early access to the game as early as November 9, 2018.

Battlefield 2042 was released on November 19, 2021. During EA's 2020/2021 Q3 earnings call it was revealed that the game will be the first to release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, utilizing their processing power to feature more players than ever in the online portion of the game. Additionally, it saw multiple innovations in multiplayer, social, and competition aspects that are new to the franchise. After 2042 was met with a poor launch, it was announced that Oskar Gabrielson, the general manager of DICE, would be stepping down from his position, and Rebecka Coutaz, former Managing Director of Ubisoft Annecy, would replace him. Vince Zampella of Respawn Entertainment and Ripple Effect Studios (the latter of which had created 2042's Portal Mode) will be heading the Battlefield franchise. It was also reported that EA game director Marcus Lehto is building a new Seattle-based studio focused on story content for Battlefield, while Ripple Effect is developing a new "Battlefield experience" set in the game's universe.

Battlefield Mobile was a cancelled free-to-play game for the Android, with an iOS release initially planned before the game's cancellation on January 31, 2023. An open beta was released in November 2022. The game was cancelled on January 31, 2023. The developer of the game, Industrial Toys, was also shut down.

TV series
In October 2012, Fox Broadcasting Company announced their intentions to make a one-hour-long television show based on Battlefield: Bad Company. The show was to be written by executive producer John Eisendrath and co-produced by Patrick Bach and Patrick O'Brien of Electronic Arts, and Doug Robinson of Happy Madison. Nothing has been developed after their announcement.

In July 2016, Paramount Television announced that it will adapt the game series for television. Anonymous Content's Michael Sugar and Ashley Zalta will executive produce.

title: Battlefield (video game series)


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Palazzo del Te

Palazzo del Te, or simply Palazzo Te, is a palace in the suburbs of Mantua, Italy. It is an example of the mannerist style of architecture, and the acknowledged masterpiece of Giulio Romano.

Name
The palace is mostly referred to by English-speaking writers, especially art historians, as Palazzo del Te. In Italian, the name is now commonly shortened to Palazzo Te.

It was originally named after Il Te, the suburb where it was built. The toponym is most likely derived from Lombard tejee or tejé, referring to a "linden grove" that once grew in the area, or alternatively from Latin attegia "hut". Art historian Giorgio Vasari spelled the name Palazzo del T, based on the now archaic Italian-language name of the letter T.

History
Palazzo del Te was constructed 1524–34 for Federico II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua, as a palace of leisure. The site chosen was that of the family stables which he had built at Isola del Te, on the edge of the marshes just outside Mantua's city walls, as early as in 1502.

Giulio Romano, a pupil of Raphael, was commissioned to design the building. The shell of the palazzo, erected within eighteen months, is basically a square house containing a cloistered courtyard. A formal garden complemented the house, enclosed by colonnaded outbuildings ending in a semicircular colonnade known as the Exedra or Esedra.

Once the shell of the building was completed, for ten years a team of plasterers, carvers, and fresco painters laboured until barely a surface in any of the loggias or salons remained undecorated. Under Romano's direction, local decorative painters such as Benedetto Pagni and Rinaldo Mantovano worked extensively on the frescos.

In July 1630, during the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628–31), Mantua and the palace were sacked over three days by an Imperial army of 36,000 Landsknecht mercenaries. The remaining populace fell victim to one of the worst plagues in history that the invaders had brought with them. The Palazzo was looted from top to bottom and remained an empty shell with nymphs, gods, goddesses, and giants adorning the walls of the empty, echoing rooms.

Description
Like the Villa Farnesina in Rome, the suburban location allowed for a mixing of both palace and villa architecture. The four exterior façades have flat pilasters against rusticated walls, the fenestration indicating that the piano nobile is the ground floor, with a secondary floor above. The East façade differs from the other three by having Palladian motifs on its pilaster and an open loggia at its centre rather than an arch to the courtyard. The facades are not so symmetrical as they appear and the spans between the columns are irregular. The centers of the North and South facades are pierced by two-storey arches without portico or pediment, simply a covered way leading to the interior courtyard.

Few windows overlook the inner courtyard ("cortile"); the colonnaded walls are decorated on all sides by deep niches and blind windows, and the intervening surfaces are spattered by spezzato (broken and blemished plaster) giving life and depth to the surfaces.

The frescoes are the most remarkable feature of the Palazzo. The subjects range from Olympian banquets in the Sala di Psiche ("Hall of Psyche") and stylised horses in the Sala dei Cavalli ("Hall of the Horses") to the most unusual of all — giants and grotesques wreaking havoc, fury, and ruin around the walls of the Sala dei Giganti ("Hall of the Giants"). These magnificent rooms, once furnished to complement the ducal court of the Gonzaga family, saw many of the most illustrious figures of their era entertained, such as the Emperor Charles V, who, when visiting in 1530, elevated his host Federico II of Gonzaga from Marquess to Duke of Mantua.

One of the most evocative parts of the lost era of the palazzo is the Casino della Grotta ("Lodge of the Grotto"), a small suite of intimate rooms arranged around a grotto and loggetta (covered balcony) where courtiers once bathed in the small cascade that splashed over the pebbles and shells encrusted in the floor and walls.

Part of the Palazzo today houses the Museo Civico del Palazzo Te (Civic Museum of Palazzo del Te), endowed by the publisher Arnoldo Mondadori. It contains a collection of Mesopotamian art.

title: Palazzo del Te


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title: User:Quistnix


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Kimbell Art Museum

The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, hosts an art collection as well as traveling art exhibitions, educational programs and an extensive research library. Its initial artwork came from the private collection of Kay and Velma Kimbell, who also provided funds for a new building to house it.

The building was designed by architect Louis I. Kahn and is widely recognized as one of the most significant works of architecture of recent times. It is especially noted for the wash of silvery natural light across its vaulted gallery ceilings.

History
Kay Kimbell was a wealthy Fort Worth businessman who built an empire of over 70 companies in a variety of industries. He married Velma Fuller, who kindled his interest in art collecting by taking him to an art show in Fort Worth in 1931, where he bought a British painting. They set up the Kimbell Art Foundation in 1935 to establish an art institute, and by the time of his death in 1964, the couple had amassed what was considered to be the best selection of old masters in the Southwest. Kay left much of his estate to the Kimbell Art Foundation, and Velma bequeathed her share of the estate to the foundation as well, with the key directive to "build a museum of the first class."

The foundation's board of trustees hired Richard Fargo Brown, then director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as the founding director of the museum with the task of constructing a building to house the Kimbell's art collection. Upon accepting the post, Brown declared that the new building should itself be a work of art, "as much a gem as one of the Rembrandts or Van Dycks housed within it." The proposed museum was given space in a 9.5 acre (3.8 hectare) site in Fort Worth's Cultural District, which was already home to three other museums, including the Fort Worth Art Museum-Center (now the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth) and the Amon Carter Museum, specializing in art of the American West.

Brown discussed the goals of the institution and its new building with the trustees and summarized them in a four-page "Policy Statement" and a nineteen-page "Pre-Architectural Program" in June 1966. After interviewing a number of prominent architects, the museum hired Louis I. Kahn in October 1966. Kahn's previous works included such acclaimed structures as the Salk Institute in California, and he had recently been honored by being chosen to design the National Assembly Building for what would become the capital of the new nation of Bangladesh. Construction for the Kimbell Art Museum began in the summer of 1969. The new building opened in October 1972 and quickly achieved an international reputation for architectural excellence.

Brown also expanded the Kimbell collection by acquiring several works of significant quality by artists like Duccio, El Greco, Rubens, and Rembrandt.

After Richard Fargo Brown's death in 1979, Edmund "Ted" Pillsbury was appointed director of the museum. Previously he had been the director of the newly opened Yale Center for British Art, which, coincidentally, was also designed by Louis Kahn. He had also been a curator at the Yale Art Gallery, Kahn's first art museum. Pillsbury continued the art acquisition program in an aggressive but disciplined fashion. Richard Brettell, director of the Dallas Museum of Art, said, "He was, in some ways, single-handedly responsible for turning the Kimbell from an institution with a great building into one whose collection matched its architecture in quality".

In 1989, Pillsbury announced plans to expand the museum's building to accommodate its enlarged collection, but the plan was dropped because of strong opposition to any major alteration of the original Louis Kahn structure. In 2007, the Kimbell solved that problem by announcing plans to construct an additional, separate building across the street from the original building. While this did not alter the Kahn structure, it did significantly alter Kahn's work. Kahn had designed the building to be approach from the lawn, and the new structire significanty altered that plan. Designed by Renzo Piano, and relocated to the west lawn, the new structure opened to the public in November 2013.

The museum is part of the Monuments Men and Women Museum Network, launched in 2021 by the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art.

The collection

In 1966, before the museum even had a building, founding director Brown included this directive in his Policy Statement: "The goal shall be definitive excellence, not size of collection." Accordingly, the museum's collection today consists of only about 350 works of art, but they are of notably high quality. The European collection is the most extensive in the museum and includes Michelangelo's first known painting, The Torment of Saint Anthony, the only painting by Michelangelo on exhibit in the Americas. It also includes works by Duccio, Fra Angelico, Mantegna, El Greco, Carracci, Caravaggio, Rubens, Guercino, La Tour, Poussin, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Boucher, Gainsborough, Vigée-Lebrun, Friedrich (the first painting by the artist acquired by a public collection outside of Europe), Cézanne, Monet, Caillebotte, Matisse, Bonnard, Mondrian, Braque, Miró and Picasso. Works from the classical period include antiquities from Ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome. The Asian collection comprises sculptures, paintings, bronzes, ceramics, and works of decorative art from China, Korea, Japan, India, Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia, and Thailand. Precolumbian art is represented by Maya works in ceramic, stone, shell, and jade, Olmec, Zapotec, and Aztec sculpture, as well as pieces from the Conte and Huari cultures. The African collection consists primarily of bronze, wood, and terracotta sculpture from West and Central Africa, including examples from Nigeria, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Oceanic art is represented by a Maori figure.

The museum owns only a few pieces created after the mid-20th century (believing that era to be the province of its neighbor, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth) and no American art (believing that to be the province of its other neighbor, the Amon Carter Museum).

The museum also houses a substantial library with over 59,000 books, periodicals and auction catalogs that are available as a resource to art historians and to faculty and graduate students from surrounding universities.

Preparation
Brown's "Policy Statement" set a clear architectural direction by calling for the new building to be "a work of art", It was augmented by his "Pre-Architectural Program", which specified that "natural light should play a vital part" in the design and that "the form of the building should be so complete in its beauty that additions would spoil that form." Brown called for a building of modest scale that would not overwhelm either the artwork or the viewer.

After an extensive search that included interviews with such noted architects as Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe, Pier Luigi Nervi, Gordon Bunshaft and Edward Larrabee Barnes, the commission was awarded to Louis Kahn in October 1966. From Kahn's point of view, Brown was an ideal client. Brown had been an admirer of Kahn's work for some time, and the approach he specified for the building was very much in line with Kahn's, particularly its emphasis on natural light.

Because Kahn had a reputation for significant time and cost overruns, a local engineering and architectural firm owned by Preston M. Geren was made associate architect, a practice followed in Fort Worth for out-of-state architects. Frank Sherwood served as their project coordinator. The Geren organization had a solid reputation for bringing in projects on time and within budget, but by their own admission they were not especially innovative. The contract called for control over construction to be turned over to Geren when Kahn had finished the design, a provision that eventually led to conflict because Kahn felt that a design was never finished until the building was constructed. Kahn once said, "the building gives you answers as it grows and becomes itself." The museum trustees settled the issue by deciding that Geren would report directly to them instead of to Kahn, but that Kahn would have final say over the design, except that any changes would have to be approved by Brown.

The new museum was to be built on a gentle slope below the Amon Carter Museum, whose entrance and terrace faced the Fort Worth skyline. Kahn was asked to build the Kimbell museum no more than 40 feet (12 m) high so it would not interfere with the view from the Carter Museum. Kahn initially proposed a low but very spacious building 450 feet (137 m) square, but Brown rejected that proposal and insisted that Kahn design a much smaller structure, a decision that would have repercussions several years later when a proposal to expand the building created a storm of controversy.

Architecture

The museum is composed of 16 parallel vaults that are each 100 feet (30.6 m) long, 20 feet (6 m) high and 20 feet (6 m) wide (internal measurements). Intervening low channels separate the vaults. The vaults are grouped into three wings. The north and south wings each have six vaults, with the western one open as a portico. The central space has four vaults, with the western one open as an entry porch facing a courtyard partially enclosed by the two outside wings.

With one exception, the art galleries are located on the upper floor of the museum to allow access to natural light. Service and curatorial spaces as well as an additional gallery occupy the ground floor. Each interior vault has a slot along its apex to allow natural light into the galleries. Air ducts and other mechanical services are located in the flat channels between the vaults.

Kahn used several techniques to give the galleries an inviting atmosphere. The ends of the vaults, which are made of concrete block, are faced with travertine inside and out. The steel handrails were "blasted" with ground pecan shells to create a matte surface texture. The museum has three glass-walled courtyards that bring natural light to the gallery spaces. One of them penetrates the gallery floor to bring natural light to the conservation studio on the ground floor.

The landscape has been described as "Kahn's most elegant built example of landscape planning" by Philadelphia landscape architect George Patton. Approaching the main entrance past a lawn edged by pools with running water, the visitor enters a courtyard through a grove of Yaupon Holly trees. The sound of footsteps on the gravel walkway echoes from the walls on either side of the courtyard and is magnified under the curved ceiling of the entry porch. After that subtle preparation, the visitor enters the hushed museum with silvery light spread across its ceiling. Harriet Pattison played the lead role in the landscape design and is also the person who suggested that open porches flanking the entrance would create a good transition from the lawn and courtyard to the galleries inside. Pattison, who had also worked with Kahn on other projects, was an employee of Patton. She is the mother of film director Nathaniel Kahn, Louis Kahn's son who made the film "My Architect" about his father.

Vaults
Kahn's first design for the galleries called for angular vaults of folded concrete plates with light slots at the top. Brown liked the light slots but rejected this particular design because it had the ceilings 30 feet (9 m) high, too high for the museum he envisioned. Further research by Marshall Meyers, Kahn's project architect for the Kimbell museum, revealed that using a cycloid curve for the gallery vaults would reduce the ceiling height and provide other benefits as well. The relatively flat cycloid curve would produce elegant galleries that were wide in proportion to their height, allowing the ceiling to be lowered to 20 feet (6 m). More importantly, that curve could also be used to produce a beautiful distribution of natural light from a slot in the top of the gallery across the entire gallery ceiling.

Kahn was pleased with this development because it allowed him to design the museum with galleries that resembled the ancient Roman vaults he had always admired. The thin, curved shells needed for the roof were challenging to build, however, so Kahn called in a leading authority on concrete construction, August Komendant, with whom he had worked before (and who, like Kahn, was born in Estonia ). Kahn generally referred to the museum's roof form as a vault, but Komendant explained that it was actually a shell playing the role of a beam. More precisely, as professor Steven Fleming points out, the shells that form the gallery roofs are "post-tensioned curved concrete beams, spanning an incredible 100 feet" (30.5 m), which "happened to have been the maximum distance that concrete walls or vaults could be produced without requiring expansion control joints." Both terms, vault and shell, are used in professional literature describing the museum.

True vaults, such as the Roman vaults that Kahn admired, will collapse if not supported along the entire lengths of each side. Not fully understanding the capabilities of modern concrete shells, Kahn initially planned to include many more support columns than were necessary for the gallery roofs. Komendant was able to use post-tensioned concrete that was only five inches thick to create gallery "vaults" that need support columns only at their four corners.

The Geren firm, which had been asked to look for ways to keep costs low, objected that the cycloid vaults would be too expensive and urged a flat roof instead. Kahn, however, insisted on a vaulted roof, which would enable him to create galleries with a comforting, room-like atmosphere yet with minimal need for columns or other internal structures that would reduce the museum's flexibility. Eventually a deal was struck whereby Geren would be responsible for the foundation and basement while Komendant would be responsible for the upper floors and cycloid shells. Kahn placed one of these shells at the front of each of the three wings as a porch or portico to illustrate how the building was constructed. The effect was, in his words, "like a piece of sculpture outside the building."

Thos. S. Byrne, Ltd. was the contractor for the project, with A. T. Seymour as project manager. Virgil Earp and L. G. Shaw, Byrne's project superintendents, designed forms with a cycloid shape that were made from hinged plywood and lined with an oily coating so they could be reused to pour concrete for multiple sections of the vaults, helping to ensure consistency. The long, straight channels at the bottoms of the shells were cast first so they could be used as platforms to support the workmen pouring concrete for the cycloid curves. After all the concrete had been poured and strengthened with internal post-tensioning cables, however, the curved parts of the shells carried the weight of their lower straight edges instead of the other way around.

To prevent the shells from collapsing at the long light slots at their apexes, concrete struts were inserted at 10-foot (3 m) intervals. A relatively thick concrete arch was added to each end of the shells to stiffen them further. To make it clear that the curved shells are supported only at their four corners and not by the walls at the ends of the vaults, thin arcs of transparent material were inserted between the curve of the shells and the end walls. Because the stiffening arches of the shells are thicker at the top, the transparent strips are tapered, thinner at the top than at the bottom. In addition, a linear transparent strip was placed between the straight bottoms of the shells and the long exterior walls to show that the shells aren't supported by those walls either. In addition to revealing the building's structure, these features bring additional natural light into the galleries in a way that is safe for the paintings.

The vault roofs, which are visible to approaching visitors, were covered with lead sheathing inspired by the lead covering of the complexly curved roofs of the Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy.

Skylights

David Brownlee and David DeLong, authors of Louis I. Kahn: In The Realm of Architecture, declare that "in Fort Worth, Kahn created a skylight system without peer in the history of architecture." Robert McCarter, author of Louis I. Kahn, says the entry gallery is "one of the most beautiful spaces ever built", with its "astonishing, ethereal, silver-colored light." Carter Wiseman, author of Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style, said that "the light in the Kimbell gallery assumed an almost ethereal quality, and has been the distinguishing factor in its fame ever since."

Creating a natural lighting system that has evoked such acclaim was challenging, and Kahn's office and the lighting designer Richard Kelly investigated over 100 approaches in their search for the proper skylight system. The goal was to illuminate the galleries with indirect natural light while excluding all direct sunlight, which would damage the artwork. Richard Kelly, lighting consultant, determined that a reflecting screen made of perforated anodized aluminum with a specific curve could be used to distribute natural light evenly across the cycloid curve of the ceiling. He hired a computer expert to determine the exact shape of the reflector's curve, making it one of the first architectural elements to be designed with computer technology.

In areas without art, such as the lobby, cafeteria and library, the entire reflector is perforated, making it possible for people standing beneath to glimpse passing clouds. In the gallery spaces, the central part of the reflector, which is directly beneath the sun, is solid, while the remainder is perforated. The concrete surfaces of the ceiling were given a high finish to further assist the reflection of the light. The result is that the strong Texas sun enters a narrow slot at the top of each vault and is evenly reflected from a curved screen across the entire arc of the polished concrete ceiling, ensuring a beautiful distribution of natural light that had never before been achieved.

Expansion
In 1989, director Ted Pillsbury, Brown's successor, announced plans to add two wings to the north and south ends of the building and chose architect Romaldo Giurgola to design them. A firestorm of protest erupted. Critics pointed out that founding director Brown's "Pre-Architectural Program" had specified that "the form of the building should be so complete in its beauty that additions would spoil that form," and that Kahn had achieved that goal extraordinarily well.

A group of prominent architects signed a letter acknowledging the need for additional space but arguing that the proposed addition would compromise the proportions of the original. They noted that when Kahn himself was questioned about the possibility of a future expansion, he said that it should "occur as a new building and be situated away from the present structure across the lawn". Esther Kahn, Louis Kahn's widow, published a letter voicing similar sentiments, noting that "there is room on the site for a separate building, which could be connected to the present museum." The project was cancelled a few months later.

Renzo Piano Pavilion
In 2006, the idea of an expansion surfaced once again at a dinner in Fort Worth attended by Timothy Potts, the museum's director at the time (Eric M. Lee has been the director since March 2009); Kay Fortson, president of the Kimbell Art Foundation and a key figure in the creation of the original building; Ben Fortson, a trustee; and Sue Ann Kahn, Louis Kahn's daughter and a vocal opponent of the original plan for expansion. The new proposal was exactly in line with Louis Kahn's own thoughts for expansion: a separate building. At that time, the new structure was to be sited on land to the back of the Kahn building.

In April 2007, the museum announced that Renzo Piano had been chosen to design the new building. Piano was an obvious choice because he had worked in Louis Kahn's office as a young man and had later established a reputation as one of the world's leading museum architects. Piano had been particularly active in Texas, designing the Menil Collection in Houston, a commission in Louis Kahn's studio at the time of Kahn's death, and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. He also designed the expansion for the Art Institute of Chicago and was co-designer of the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

The schematic designs for the new Kimbell building were made public in November 2008, and the plans were released in May 2010. The 85,000 square foot (7,900 m2) structure would complement the original building but not mimic it. Unlike the original, its lines would be rectilinear, not curvilinear. Like the original, however, it would have three bays with the middle bay stepped back from the other two. The new building expansion, named the Renzo Piano Pavilion, was officially inaugurated to the public on November 27, 2013.

The new building should also resolve a parking issue at the museum. Kahn was deeply troubled by the negative impact of the automobile on city life; he once spoke of "the destruction of the city by the motor car." Fundamentally opposed to the idea of orienting buildings to the automobile, Kahn placed the main parking lot in the back of the building, intending for visitors to walk around the building and enter through carefully planned landscaping. Most visitors, however, entered through the back door on the ground floor, missing the entry experience that Kahn had designed. The new building will solve the problem with an underground parking garage. After visitors ascend to the gallery level of the new building, they can exit it and walk across the lawn and the courtyard to enter the original building as Kahn had intended.

Recognition

 * In 1998, the American Institute of Architects gave the museum their prestigious Twenty-five Year Award, which is awarded to no more than one building per year.
 * Robert Campbell, architectural critic for the Boston Globe and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, declared it to be "the greatest American building of the second half of the 20th century."
 * Robert McCarter, author of Louis I. Kahn, said that the Kimbell Art Museum "is rightly considered Kahn's greatest built work" and "has been the subject of more scholarly studies than all his other works combined."
 * Carter Wiseman, author of Louis I. Kahn: Beyond Time and Style, said, "With the Kimbell, Kahn had achieved something unique in the history of modern architecture, a building that engages an element of nature—sunlight—with unprecedented skill and combined it with a contemporary program in a structure that also called upon the most advanced engineering while invoking the monuments of the past."
 * Thos. S. Byrne, Ltd., the construction contractor, won the first Build America Award from the Associated General Contractors of America in 1972 for the "innovative construction techniques" used on the museum.

Management
The Kimbell Art Museum derives around 65% of its $12 million budget from its unrestricted endowment of more than $400 million. The endowment fell from $466 million to $398 million during the first years of the 2007–2012 global financial crisis. The museum has no special funds for acquisitions. Museum membership is at 15,000. In 2019, the museum appointed Guillaume Kientz as the curator of European art; he had previously worked in the Louvre.

title: Kimbell Art Museum


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Battlefield 2

Battlefield 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows. It was released in June 2005 as the third game in the Battlefield franchise.

Players fight in a modern battlefield, using modern weapon systems. Battlefield 2 is a first-person shooter with strategy and tactical shooter elements.

The single-player aspect features missions that involve clashes between U.S. Marines, China and the fictional Middle Eastern Coalition. The multiplayer aspect of the game allows players to organize into squads that come under the leadership of a single commander to promote teamwork. The story takes place in the early 21st century during a fictional world war between various power blocs: China, the European Union, the fictional Middle Eastern Coalition (MEC), Russia and the United States. The game takes place in different fronts, as the Middle East and China are being invaded by US and EU forces, and the United States is being invaded by Chinese and MEC forces. A sequel, Battlefield 3, was released in October 2011.

On June 30, 2014, the multiplayer master server was shut down alongside other GameSpy-powered titles, although it can still be played online throughout fan-created mods with alternative servers. In 2017, Electronic Arts demanded the takedown of the modified versions of Battlefield 2 on alternate servers, distributed by a group known as "Revive Network", as infringement of their copyrights.

Gameplay
Battlefield 2 is a sequel to Battlefield Vietnam, with many changes to the popular gameplay of the original. Many of these new gameplay features were added to the game with teamwork and collaboration in mind. The new game engine includes improved physics, dynamic lighting, and more realistic material penetration.

Battlefield 2 is a multiplayer video game played via the Internet or on a local area network. A single-player mode with three difficulty levels is included. Both player modes use the same maps and use Battlefield's conquest game mode. Single-player mode allows 16 computer-controlled players while Internet mode allows up to 64 players. Players can choose to play as the United States Marine Corps, the People's Liberation Army, or the "Middle Eastern Coalition". Additional factions are playable through the expansion packs, such as the European Union. Progress in the game is made via promotions which allow additional weapons to be unlocked. By playing the game on ranked servers, players are able to add to their global player statistics. These statistics are used to award promotions and other achievements.

In Battlefield 2, players are divided into two opposing teams (which factions they represent is dependent upon the map). The key objective in Battlefield 2 is to reduce the opposing teams tickets. Tickets represent an army's ability to reinforce their position on the battlefield; each team has only a limited supply of tickets, and each casualty on the battlefield reduces the number of available tickets. Control points represent key points on the map, and are represented by flags. Control points are Battlefield 2's spawn points, and one team possessing a significant majority of the control points causes the other teams tickets to gradually decrease, regardless of casualties. A round ends when one team's tickets gone, the round's timer ends, or if at any point a team holds no control points, and has no soldiers alive on the battlefield (meaning they are not present in any way on the battlefield).

Battlefield 2's two game modes are Conquest and Cooperative. The only difference between the two modes is that Cooperative includes computer-controlled players, whilst Conquest allows only human players. Results from Cooperative mode do not count toward global player statistics.

Infantry classes
In Battlefield 2, as with previous Battlefield titles, players are able to select from a variety of infantry classes. Each class of soldier is equipped with different weaponry appropriate to their role in the battle. Assault soldiers, for example, are general-purpose infantry with grenade-launcher equipped assault-rifles and extra armor, Medics carry first-aid equipment such as a field defibrillator, and Anti-Tank troopers are equipped with missiles which are effective against heavy armor.

Players are able to choose a class at the start of a match, or between dying and respawn. Players can also change their class by picking up a "kit" from the body of an incapacitated soldier, friendly or otherwise. Hence, an Assault soldier can become a Medic if they come across a fallen Medic. Player classes are divided in 'Heavy' (with reduced damage done to the torso, but lower stamina) and 'Light' (with standard multipliers, but higher stamina, thus able to sprint for a longer time).

Within the infantry class, there are four support classes with special abilities. The Engineer can repair with his wrench, the Medic can revive with his defibrillator paddles and heal, the Support can resupply ammunition with his ammunition bags and the sniper can place claymores and engage long distance targets. When one of these three classes occupies a vehicle (with the exception of the recon), nearby personnel and vehicles can be replenished, repaired or healed by being in close proximity.

 * Assault - Primary role is to engage in combat with enemies at medium range.
 * Medic - Primary role is to revive and heal teammates
 * Anti-Tank - Primary role is to undertake anti-tank warfare
 * Engineer - Primary role is to repair or destroy vehicles
 * Support - Primary role is to provide suppressive fire against enemies and resupply teammates
 * Special Forces - Primary role is carry out stealth and sabotage missions
 * Sniper - Primary role is to engage targets at long distances.

Vehicles
The various forces still use the trademark feature of the Battlefield series – the large stable of vehicles that any player can climb into and control. There are many different types of vehicles playable in Battlefield 2, all based on real-life vehicles used by the militaries of different countries.

In contrast to Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2 has only one purely water-based vehicle, the rigid-inflatable boat; however, the BTR-90, the MEC APC, can travel in water as well as the LAV-25 and the WZ 551, the USMC and PLA equivalents, respectively. The developers tried to design the game so that every vehicle would be weak to another type of vehicle, intending to create a situation similar to a game of rock-paper-scissors. For example, mobile anti-air was intended to effectively destroy helicopters, but are vulnerable against opposing tanks. Included within this relationship are stationary defenses such as light machine guns and anti-aircraft/TOW emplacements. The availability and number of certain vehicles are dependent on the map and its size as well as control points captured. Also, more vehicles become available to be used on the maps of expansion/booster packs. (see Maps). The USS Essex is the only naval ship featured in BF2, featuring two spawn points and aircraft spawn points, and is not drivable or destroyable, except for its Phalanx turrets.

Squads
Players are able to form squads of up to six soldiers in order to more effectively work as a team. Up to nine squads are permitted per team; each squad has a number (automatically assigned) and name (usually a phonetic alphabet letter) for identification. Members of a squad have the ability to communicate with one another via Battlefield 2's integrated voice over IP (VoIP) system.

Squad leaders may assign their squad a variety of objectives (for example, moving to or attacking a specific location). Orders may also be given by the team's commander. Squad leaders are able to issue requests for commander assets (such as artillery fire) and have a direct VoIP channel to the commander.

Members of a squad may spawn near their squad leader, provided that the leader is not dead (or incapacitated), and that the team holds at least one control point. This feature allows squads to more quickly regroup after taking casualties.

Commander
The commander position is an exclusive role played by one member of each team. Any member of a team may apply for the position, but priority is given to players of higher rank.

The commander alone has access to the "commander screen", an interface similar to that of a real-time strategy game. This allows the commander an overview of the battlefield as a whole, or zoom in and view parts of the map in real-time. The commander also has control of the various commander assets, which include artillery strikes, vehicle and supply drops, and UAV's. They can deploy them to assist their team. The commander can communicate with squads either by sending orders, or via VoIP voice communication. These tools allow the commander to strategically coordinate their forces on the battlefield.

A commander may resign at any point, freeing the position for other members of their team; they may also be forcibly removed by a successful mutiny vote conducted by their team (provided the server allows mutiny votes). Although the commander does not gain points by normal methods (kills, flag captures, etc.), their score is doubled at the end of the round if their team wins.

The commander position would be seen again in Battlefield 2142 and Battlefield 4.

Awards and unlockable weapons
Players can earn awards (ribbons, badges, and medals) for certain in-game accomplishments. Badges and ribbons are the easiest to obtain, while medals are usually much harder, requiring more extensive play. As players ascend through the ranks they will gain the ability to unlock certain weapons. Each time a player is promoted to an eligible rank, they are given the opportunity to unlock one of seven unlockable weapons, one for each class, which they may subsequently use in place of the standard weapon for the given class.

Battlefield recorder
A built-in game recorder records battles for subsequent replay. These files can be downloaded from a server which supports BattleRecorder directly after their respective game. Recorded battle files are around 1 to 8 megabytes in size and are played within the Battlefield 2 engine. Camera angles can be changed (free roaming & selected player), as well as the speed, though there is no rewind capability. Files can be exported to AVI format. The Battlefield Recorder has facilitated the creation of various machinima. Usage of the PunkBuster service is mandatory for all official ranked Battlefield 2 servers, but optional for unranked servers.

Maps
Battlefield 2 offers 15 maps for the players to play but shipped with 12. These maps are diverse, ranging from swamps such as Songhua Stalemate, to urban areas such as Strike at Karkand, to an unfinished dam known as Kubra Dam. The USMC is present in all maps and faces against either the MEC or the PLA depending on the map. The PLA is present in Far East theaters such as Dragon Valley and Daqing Oilfields. MEC is present in Middle East theaters such as Gulf of Oman and Zatar Wetlands. The BF2 series including the expansion and booster packs puts the map count at 29 maps.

Battlefield 2 maps have 3 variations, each suited for a certain number of players. Each map has 16, 32, and 64 player-suggested variations in which the area of battlefield or playing field is relatively small, medium, and large, respectively. The only exceptions to this are Wake Island 2007, which is locked at 64-player size and the Euro Force maps, Operation Smokescreen, Great Wall, and Taraba Quarry, which have no 64-player size. 32 and 64 player maps are unavailable to offline players from retailers, but an option is given to download 64 Single player AI bot mods. Other contrasts between these variations other than the size are the number and position of control points and availability of vehicles. As a result, the gameplay of the map is different depending on the variation.

Plot
The game is set in 2007 during a world war between various power blocs: the United States, aided by the European Union, is at war against Russia, China and the fictional Middle Eastern Coalition (MEC), aided by various insurgents.

There is no given reason as to how or why the war broke out. In-game, the European Union and the United States fight China and the MEC. It is mentioned in-game that the US and EU are allies and the EU has negotiated a truce with Russia, but it is unknown if China and the MEC are allies. The game also takes place in different fronts, as the Middle East and China are being invaded by US and EU forces, and the United States is being invaded by Chinese and MEC forces.

Battlefield 2: Special Forces
Battlefield 2's first expansion pack, Special Forces, first began its development sometime during or shortly before the release of the original Battlefield 2, and was worked on by DICE's Canadian division. Battlefield producer, Mike Doran, commented in August 2005 that "The truth is that work on Battlefield 2: Special Forces began several months ago." It was officially announced on July 14, 2005 and released on November 21 of the same year. The focus of the development was infantry-based combat as opposed to vehicle-centric combat from the original. As such, most of the additional content in the expansion pack can only be used by or for infantry.

The expansion pack provides eight maps, 6 playable factions, and ten more vehicles such as the AH-64D Apache and Mi-35 Hind, though all jets have been removed. In addition to these new contents, players have access to new equipment such as night vision goggles, tear gas, gas masks, zip lines and grappling hooks which can alter gameplay. There are eight more small arms weapons available such as the G36K/E and FN SCAR L/H and several weapons from the original are replaced. The expansion offers more awards in the form of badges, ribbons, and medals that players can earn. Finally, many of the weapons from the expansion may be used in the original Battlefield 2.

Booster packs
Booster packs are additional content released for Battlefield 2 that are currently available for free download, and as with Special Forces, they were developed by DICE Canada. The booster packs were later available in retail form as the Booster Pack Collection, containing a DVD which features these packs, as well as being included in "The Complete Collection", containing a DVD with both the original game and all of the expansions/booster packs.

Booster packs add a significant amount of content to the game, but are different from expansion packs because they are intended to add to the original gameplay and not stand on their own (such as Special Forces does). The booster packs include new maps, vehicles, and a new European Union faction.

The two booster packs were included free of charge in the 1.50 update released on September 1, 2009.

Euro Force
Battlefield 2: Euro Force is the first booster pack, and was released on March 14, 2006. The booster pack allows players to play as a new European Union army, armed with new weapons and vehicles from the various countries of the EU. It is available for purchase online at the Electronic Arts download service, or as part of the retail Booster Pack Collection. It was scheduled for release in February, but was delayed due to a substantial number of new bugs caused by the release of patch 1.2. It features a whole new army, 4 new vehicles, 3 new maps, and 7 new weapons such as the L85A2 with AG36 GL, the FAMAS, the HK53, the HK21, and the Benelli M4. Some of the vehicles for the EU military include the Challenger 2, Eurocopter Tiger, Leopard 2A6 and the Eurofighter. The maps include 'The Great Wall of China', against the People's Liberation Army of China, where the EU army is trying to gain a strong foothold in northern China, to reinforce their American allies in the south later on. 'Operation Smoke Screen' features the EU army fighting the MEC in the Middle East for precious oil fields, and the third map, 'Taraba Quarry', where the EU army is trying to reinforce American positions in the south. Mindful of the European plans, the MEC tries to stall the EU, where the Europeans must confront their enemies because that route is the only possible path along that side of the Caspian Sea.

It was made free with patch 1.5.

Armored Fury
Battlefield 2: Armored Fury is the second booster pack released for Battlefield 2 and was released on June 6, 2006. It added three new maps, as well as two new vehicle classes: attack jets for close air support and reconnaissance helicopters that operate as a mobile UAV. The booster pack has the USMC defending U.S. soil from invasions from the PLA and MEC. Operation Midnight Sun features the Chinese landing at the Alaskan port Valdez where they are trying to secure much needed fuel from the pipeline. Operation Road Rage is a MEC vs. USMC map, where the MEC are using US Highways to transport units to industrial areas. Operation Harvest sees the United States trying to stall the MEC en route to the capital of Washington D.C. from the northwest, being blocked in a Pennsylvania Dutch farm, while waiting for reinforcements. New vehicles include Attack or Close Air Support aircraft such as the A-10 Thunderbolt II, Su-39 and the Nanchang Q-5 as well as new light utility helicopters such as MH-6 Little Bird, EC-635 and the Z-11. As well as the addition of new helicopters and planes, DICE also added the Muscle Car and Semi Truck. However, the proposed AV-8B Harrier was cut from the add-on due to balancing issues.

Like Euro Force, it was made free with patch 1.5.

Soundtrack
The soundtrack of Battlefield 2 consists of 18 tracks composed and created by Fredrik Englund, David Tallroth, and Jonas Östholm.

Reception
The game received widespread critical acclaim, garnering an aggregate score of 91/100 from 55 reviews on Metacritic. It received five stars out of five from publications Yahoo! Games, GameSpy, X-Play and Computer Gaming World. PC Gamer awarded it 94%, stating, "Its finely tuned maps and balanced gameplay prove that you can improve on perfection," and honored it as Game of the Year. GameSpot rated the game 9.3 out of 10 claiming that "when you experience Battlefield 2 like it's meant to be played, with everyone working together and using real-time voice chat, the game quickly becomes unlike anything else that you've played before."

Some of the lower scores were reactions to the large amount of bugs and glitches in the initial release, including crash to desktop bugs and network problems. For example, Gaming Nexus (who awarded the game an 8.7 out of 10) reported, "I’ve had many cool experiences playing it and a lot of 'did I just see that' moments but all of that is crapped on by the bugs and quirks in the game."

GamesRadar approved of the game, awarding a 90%, but added a disclaimer that the gaming experience is best "if your machine is up to it". GameSpot's review agreed with the high system requirements noting that "the load times are one of the biggest gripes that we have, as you will spend quite a bit of time waiting for a game to start up, even on high-end machines...also a bit demanding in the hardware department."

Battlefield 2 sold 1.2 million copies in its first month after release. Total sales by July 2006 were 2,225,000. It received a "Gold" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 200,000 copies in the United Kingdom.

Battlefield 2 won PC Gamer US's "Best Multiplayer Game 2005" and "Game of the Year 2005" awards. The magazine's Dan Stapleton wrote, "Few other games in the history of the medium have so effectively captured the visceral feeling of modern military combat in an urban environment". The editors of Computer Games Magazine presented Battlefield 2 with their 2005 awards for "Best Action Game" and "Best Multiplayer", and named it the year's second-best computer game overall. They called it "perhaps the most thrilling example of how far shooters have come in the last few years."

During the 9th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awarded Battlefield 2 with "First-Person Action Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Online Gameplay", along with a nomination for "Computer Game of the Year".

title: Battlefield 2


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PunkBuster

PunkBuster is a computer program that is designed to detect software used for cheating in online games. It does this by scanning the memory contents of the local machine. A computer identified as using cheats may be banned from connecting to protected servers. The aim of the program is to isolate cheaters and prevent them from disrupting legitimate games. PunkBuster is developed and published by Even Balance, Inc.

History
Tony Ray founded Even Balance to develop PunkBuster after his experience with cheaters on Team Fortress Classic.

The first beta of PunkBuster was announced on September 21, 2000, for Half-Life. Valve was at the time fighting a hard battle against cheating, which had been going on since the release of the game. The first game in which PunkBuster was integrated was id Software's Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Published features

 * Real-time scanning of memory, by placing a PunkBuster Client on players' computers searching for known hacks/cheats using a built-in database.
 * Throttled two-tiered background auto-update system using multiple Internet Master Servers to provide end-user security ensuring that no false or corrupted updates can be installed on players' computers.
 * Frequent status reports are sent to the PunkBuster Server by all players. When necessary, the PunkBuster Server raises a violation which (depending upon settings) will cause the offending player to be removed from the game and all other players to be informed of the violation.
 * PunkBuster Admins can also manually remove players from the game for a specified number of minutes or permanently ban if desired.
 * PunkBuster Servers can optionally be configured to randomly check player settings looking for known exploits of the game engine.
 * PunkBuster Servers can be configured to instruct clients to calculate partial MD5 hashes of files inside the game installation directory. The results are compared against a set configuration and differences logged, and optionally, the client removed from the server.
 * PunkBuster Admins can request actual screenshot samples from specific players and/or can configure the PB Server to randomly grab screenshot samples from players during gameplay. However, it is possible for a game hack to block screenshots (producing a cropped screenshot) or remove all visual features of a hack (cleaning the screenshot) to remain undetected, leaving the effectiveness of this feature diminished.
 * An optional "bad name" facility is provided so that PunkBuster Admins can prevent players from using offensive player names containing unwanted profanity or slurs.
 * Search functions are provided for PunkBuster Admins who wish to search player's keybindings and scripts for anything that may be known to exploit the game.
 * The PunkBuster Player Power facility can be configured to allow players to self-administer game servers when the Server Administrator is not present entirely without the need for passwords, in which the players can call votes to have a player removed from the server for a certain amount of time.
 * PunkBuster Servers have an optional built-in mini HTTP web server interface that allows the game server to be remotely administered via a web browser from anywhere over the Internet.
 * PunkBuster Admins can stream their server logs in real time to another location.
 * PunkBuster has initiated Punkbuster Hardware Bans, that bans hardware components upon detection of cheats that disrupt or circumvent PunkBuster's normal operation. These bans mean permanently banning players whose HD id matches the blacklist at Evenbalance.

Incompatibilities
Some games (like Crysis or BioShock 2) do not have a 64-bit version of PunkBuster. For this reason, 64 bit clients will not be able to play in PunkBuster enabled servers unless they run the 32-bit client of the game.

PunkBuster does not allow Windows users without administrative accounts to connect to any games. Upon connecting to a game, the user will be immediately kicked for having insufficient OS privileges. Starting with PB client v1.700, a Windows service with full administrative rights is used in complement with the ingame PunkBuster client, allowing updates without user rights elevation. However, some games might still require administrative rights before PunkBuster will function correctly.

Global GUID bans and Hardware bans
PunkBuster uses a system called 'global banning'. Either the GUID (generated from the CD key ) or parts of the computer's hardware are banned from PunkBuster-enabled servers. Most attempts at cheating will only receive a detection warning, but cheats that interfere with PunkBuster's software itself could lock out the GUID of the offending system and disable access to all PunkBuster enabled servers for that particular game. Particularly severe instances of cheating may lock the offending computer out of all PunkBuster-protected games.

As of June 30, 2004, Even Balance has used unique hardware identifiers to permanently ban players who attempt to interfere with PunkBuster's normal operation (which is, itself, a violation of the PunkBuster EULA). Even Balance uses a 128-bit private one-way hash so that no serial number information for individual computers can be obtained from a hardware GUID.

As with previous PunkBuster GUID bans, hardware GUID lockouts are permanent. Even Balance has not disclosed what hardware PunkBuster looks for when issuing a ban, but close examination of the software has indicated that the GUID may be based on the serial numbers of scanned hard-drives. As with many bans based on information from the user's system, hardware GUID bans can be spoofed.

False positives
During the period of October 30 to November 6, 2013, Punkbuster was falsely banning Battlefield 4 users with the error "(Gamehack #89265)". As of November 8, 2013 the issue has been resolved by Even Balance inc. and all Punkbuster bans resulting from this error have been resolved and officially deemed a false-positive.
 * "We have confirmed that Violation #89265 may be triggered by non-cheat software. This Violation code has been removed from our master servers and we encourage server admins to give the benefit of the doubt to players who raised this code over the past few days."

Attacks on PunkBuster
PunkBuster usually searches for known cheat program signatures as opposed to relying on a heuristic approach. On March 23, 2008, hackers published and implemented a proof of concept exploit of PunkBuster's indiscriminate memory scanning. Because PunkBuster scans all of a machine's virtual memory, malicious users were able to cause mass false positives by transmitting text fragments from known cheat programs onto a high population IRC channel. When PunkBuster detected the text within user's IRC client text buffers, the users were banned. On March 25, 2008, Even Balance confirmed the existence of this exploit.

Games using PunkBuster

 * Assassin's Creed 3
 * Battlefield 2
 * Battlefield 2142
 * Battlefield 3
 * Battlefield 1942
 * Battlefield 4
 * Battlefield Hardline
 * Battlefield: Bad Company 2
 * Battlefield Heroes
 * Battlefield Play4Free
 * Battlefield Vietnam
 * Blacklight: Retribution
 * Call of Duty
 * Call of Duty 2
 * Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
 * Call of Duty: World at War
 * Crysis
 * Doom 3
 * Far Cry
 * Far Cry 2
 * Far Cry 3
 * Medal of Honor (2010)
 * Medal of Honor: Warfighter
 * Need for Speed: ProStreet
 * Quake 3 Arena
 * Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad
 * Return to Castle Wolfenstein
 * Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix
 * Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
 * Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Online
 * Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2
 * America's Army

title: PunkBuster


text:
User:Heenan73

Biography
A late arrival on the Internet (1997), I now run several web sites, with varying success, and have interests in several open source and experimental projects.

General Policy
I have a policy of not suffering fools gladly, and I have little patience with geeks whose obsession with order and regulation often prevents real progress; I like to see results, and I always judge progress on "how an outsider would see it" - so trying to distract me from real issues to your bureaucratic obsessions is likely to be a non-starter. But, hey, if that's your bag, go for it!

I'm still surprised how many bullies survive on wikipedia; they edit your work at will, and revert at will (with threats) - but woe betide the junior editor who objects to their hard work being deleted at a stroke with no discussion.

Luckily, the bullies are a very small minority, so life goes on, as does wikipedia - just a shame that there's no way to eradicate the problem.

Meanwhile, I'll stick to providing what visitors want - honesty, integrity and information (yes, I'm really out of fashion!).

Interests in Wikipedia
I no longer have specific areas of interest; I found that too many areas I was interested in were 'owned' by idiots who would rather hold back Wikipedia than allow 'outsiders' to change anything of substance; life's too short.

I still use Wikipedia, and if I spot a trivial issue that I can improve or correct, then I'll happily do so.

Comments, Discussion & Feedback
... And see the 'Talk' page.

I've had enough
Petty editors who think they own pages will be the ruination of Wikipedia; I can take plain speaking without whining (unlike some), but I will not waste my time improving pages to have them vandalised by editorswho have not even read the changes carefully, and do not understand the point.

The most recent example of this has involved suppression of information, for the simple reason that I dared to post on his page without his permission and blessing. This is the single worst vandalism I have seen in my several years and hundreds of edits at Wikipedia ("we don't call this vandalism", he says, smugly - oh, so that's all right then?). Oh, and I never once sought a Thank You, a "badge", or any other recognition, and don't now.

I have rudely and firmly put the jerk in his place; so firmly, in fact, that I will inevitabley be banned from Wikipedia - which, frankly, is preferable to a Kangaroo Court which would, equally inevitably, support him against me (no hard feelings; I've seen his badges, I know how bureaucracies work).

For years, as a prolific Internet user, I have felt an obligation to correct and improve Wikipedia; this incident has released me from that obligation. I now feel an obligation to expose and mock corrupt editors (on Facebook etc), and an obligation to warn people off editing while jobsworth editors are allowed to lie, bully and vandalise at the expense of readers and contributors.

This will be removed once I'm banned, so enjoy it while it lasts. Thank you and Goodbye Heenan73 (talk) 13:10, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

title: User:Heenan73


text:
User:Prisonblues/Colleges/Clare College, Cambridge

Clare College, Cambridge


text:
User:Prisonblues/Colleges/Jesus College, Cambridge

Jesus College, Cambridge


text: User:Prisonblues/Colleges/Trinity College, Cambridge


text:
User:Prisonblues/Colleges/Queens' College, Cambridge

Queens' College, Cambridge


text:
User:Prisonblues/Colleges/Christ's College, Cambridge

Christ's College, Cambridge