text:
Talk:Bruce Schneier

schneier is said to belong to the 'cypherpunk' category but there's zero evidence or 'sources' for the claim. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.226.23.229 (talk) 18:37, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

debate
"He also believes that changes to airport security since 11 September 2001 have done more harm than good and defeated former head of the Transportation Security Administration, Kip Hawley, in an Economist online debate by 87% to 13% regarding the issue.[17]"

so? if 90% agreed with the idea that the post-911 airport security changes did more harm than good, then he lost the debate. i would like to compare what people believed before the debate to after. (the source is paywalled by the economist or something). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sboosali (talk • contribs) 22:22, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

how to say it?
Is it pronounced "shn-EYE-er" or "shn-EE-er"? —User:17.206.16.106 23:44, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

 * The first one.   —User:Mulad (talk) 00:13, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)
 * Are you completely sure? (How do you know?) Also, could this information maybe go in the article? It's what I came here looking for, and it's something useful that a lot of people want to know about him. Glenn Willen (Talk)   00:45, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
 * There's a movie of a talk given by Schneier here, and he's introduced as "shn-EYE-er". — Matt Crypto 01:31, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
 * You pronounce it "Shneyer On Fire"! :-)--169.232.119.242 (talk) 07:07, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Transportation Security Administration
Was there some airline-related work we should mention in this article? Ojw 2 July 2005 19:56 (UTC)

Lack of criticism?
Is there any serious criticism of Schneier's work? Ludvik 13:15, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Of course there is - cryptanalysis of his ciphers and criticisms of some positions he takes. But those belong on the entries about those things, not here.  For example, here are some responses to 10 risks of PKI:   — ciphergoth 15:33, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Lost PGP key
Is it true that he lost a PGP private key and, since then there were no revocation measures, he still receives mail he can't decypher?

 * Yup. See the comment (footnote, I think I remember) in Practical Cryptography. ww 06:19, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Mention in da Vinci Code
From the 15 May 2006 edition of Crypto-Gram:
 * As an aside, I am mentioned in Da Vinci Code. No, really.  Page 199 of the American hardcover edition.  "Da Vinci had been a cryptography pioneer, Sophie knew, although he was seldom given credit.  Sophie's university instructors, while presenting computer encryption methods for securing data, praised modern cryptologists like Zimmermann and Schneier but failed to mention that it was Leonardo who had invented one of the first rudimentary forms of public key encryption centuries ago."  That's right.  I am a realistic background detail.

 * There is nothing Schneier can do about getting gratuitously name-dropped, but that piece of trivia does not belong in WP. Appearing in a sentence like that makes him look like a bit of an idiot by association. Leibniz 13:50, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

 * Besides, the bit about Leonardo inventing public key encryption makes mention of Schneier really unimportant. In the presence of a major whopper, the little ones don't get much noticed. ww 03:32, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Did it already happen to one of you?
While reading Secrets & Lies, I have a feeling that Schneier is always saying behind the written lines: HIRE ME, HIRE MY COMPANY, HIRE MY BUSINESS, etc, etc. Is it a cryptography expert subliminal trick??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.19.136.57 (talk • contribs)

 * These aren't the subliminal mind tricks you're looking for. Schneier can go about his business.  Move along. — ciphergoth 08:37, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Haha. Help me, Bruce Schneier. You're my only hope. --JHP (talk) 05:58, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Citation templates
I've tried to format the citation templates according to their documentation. The relevant parts are as follows:

Template:Cite book:
 * date: Full date of publication edition being referenced, in ISO 8601 YYYY-MM-DD format, eg. 2006-02-17. Must not be wikilinked.
 * OR: year: Year of publication edition being referenced, and month: Name of the month of publication. If you also have the day, use date instead. Must not be wikilinked.

pp. is an abbreviation used when citing multiple pages (p or p. is the abbreviation for "page").
 * pages:  pp. 5–7 : first page and optional last page. This is for listing the pages relevant to the citation, not the total number of pages in the book.

Template:Cite web:
 * date: Full date of publication, preferably in ISO 8601 YYYY-MM-DD format, e.g. 2006-02-17. May be wikilinked.
 * OR: year: Year of publication, and month: Name of the month of publication. If you also have the day, use date instead. Must not be wikilinked.

By default these dates appear as ISO 8601 YYYY-MM-DD dates, but this can be changed easily in your preferences for any full date. Unfortunately, the Rebecca Blood reference only lists year and month, and so can't be automagically reformatted.

 * I published the Bruce Schneier interview on January 31, 2007. Rebeccablood 18:35, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

»

Hopefully that clears it up? —Grim Revenant 04:49, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

 * Note that currently, MediaWiki only reformats dates that are linked, e.g., 2006-02-17 . The "accessdate" field is automatically linked, but not the "date" field. -- intgr 07:15, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

 * The only reason I didn't link that one was that the template specified "Must not be wikilinked", so I assumed that it would be taken care of automatically. Anyone have any idea why linking the date would be a bad idea? —Grim Revenant 08:12, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

 * It breaks the template, to put it simply. Templates are currently inconsistent (even internally: cite web accepts wikilinked date attributes, but insists on unlinked ISO format for accessdate) and always will be to some extent. Where the template does not auto-link dates presented unlinked in ISO format I always use a wikilinked "human" layout, i.e. 20 April 2007, which makes it easier for editors. Chris Cunningham 08:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

attack tree reversion
BS is one of the pioneers of the technique, and has written several published articles on it (eg, in Dr Dobbs). It is quite relevant to this article. ww (talk) 02:41, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose merging the contents of Individual-i into this article. That stub, long unattended, lacks any assertion of notability sufficient for stand alone status, but it may be relevant within the context of the biography of the symbol's creator. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 20:19, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Sole comment on this topic took place here. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:09, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

New reference
I think that the "citation needed" should be removed from the line that states that Schneier has authored and coauthored hundreds of cientific papers. I suggest replacing it with a reference such as: List of articles authored or coauthored by Bruce Schneier, on Google Scholar —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.187.6.252 (talk) 23:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Mention in 24
In the episode of the Fox Television show 24 aired on Monday; March 16, 2009 the character played by Carlo Rota suggested that the designer of Blowfish encryption designed a back door into it. Bruce was not mentioned by name, only Blowfish, and it was unclear how much fact and fiction was being mixed. I figured it was worth recording here. mattclare (talk) 01:41, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Blowfish was published as open source, and has been available for many years. It's from a group of well-respected crypto designers, and lots and lots o feyes have looked through it. Schneieir denies, and no one else has suggested, that there is a backdoor of the sort probably implied here. My best estimate is that the ratio of truth to fiction in this instance approaches 0 very closely. In short, no there there, despite the show's well known truthiness in all other respects. ww (talk) 05:09, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It is highly unlikely that the producers/directors of the show did any research on Blowfish beyond its name. They probably just threw the "backdoor" in because it was convenient and a form of technical mumbo-jumbo that the audience would understand. My guess is that there is exactly 0 thought behind such a statement. The show is fiction, remember. B-Con (talk) 17:02, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Ciphers and algorithms
I added Bruce_Schneier as other than his publications they are his main work. If anyone knows of any additional algorithms please add them. -Ravedave (talk) 02:58, 1 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I sent him an email asking of the list was correct and he replied: "Add Helix. Both Helix and Phelix are stream ciphers.  Yarrow and Fortuna are PRNGs.  Blowfish, Twofish, Threefish, MacGuffin are all block ciphers.  Sloitare is a stream cipher.  Skein is a hash function." -Ravedave (talk) 17:33, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Is Bruce a book?
There's been a recent disagreement about whether this article should be in Category:Computer security books. I still don't think it should, because the topic of this article is not a book. (See also Category talk:Computer security books.) It's certainly true that "Applied Crypto is [a book], it's canonical in its field", but I don't think that justifies the inclusion of the author in the "Book" category. If the book is so important - and I agree it is notable enough - perhaps we should create an article (even if it is just a stub for now) and add that article to the category instead of this one. Comments anyone? Mitch Ames (talk) 12:16, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

 * Rather than using up all of those bytes above, you could have created a couple of categorised redirects by now. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:19, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

 * I've added the category to the Applied Cryptography redirect. Categorizing redirects says that it is appropriate to place redirects in categories if the target title is incompatible with the category. Hut 8.5 15:03, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

 * OK, thanks for that. I've remove this article from Category:Computer security book again, because it's not needed, as the book article/redirect is in the category. (In particular, I think that this article is sufficiently similar to the Vestibules / Radio Free Vestibule example in WP:Categorizing redirects that the example gives clear support to the removal.) Mitch Ames (talk) 08:51, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Protection
Last time I checked, M. Schneier was alive ). Does this page not fit in the "living person biography" category and thus deserve a protection against edits?   11:40, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think you understand how protection is used in Wikipedia. The protection policy does allow biographies of living people to be protected if there are heavy and persistent violations of the policy on biographies of living people, but that isn't the case here. There isn't any practice of protecting all biographies of living people whatever the status of the article, as you seem to think. Hut 8.5 12:01, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, my bad, then, and thank you for the explanation.  13:10, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Early employment?
The "Early life" section should be expanded (and the information about honorary degrees, hardly part of his early life, moved elsewhere). I'd like to see some information on where he was working in the years after he graduated from university. Wasn't he a DoD employee for some years? 188.24.89.163 (talk) 18:47, 14 May 2013 (UTC) Yes, yes - where is "personal life" like in so many other WP articles? Wife? Kids? The "squid" factor? All of these are mising — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.76.70.43 (talk) 01:00, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Minneapolis or New York
The article is in the lists List of people from Minnesota and List of people from New York. Which one is correct? The article mentions that Bruce Schneier grew up in Flatbush, which lies in New York, but doesn't really mention Minneapolis. Can anyone with knowledge clear this up? --Athaba (talk) 17:12, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

Master in Computer Science
... and got his master's degree in computer science in 1988. Does the AU offer such a degree? And yes, I read the source ... and the AU site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.221.20.115 (talk) 11:16, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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Age
I think he is born in 1963, not in 1952.—Sung Kyun Kwan (talk) 16:41, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The current birth date (1952) is supposedly based on his Facebook profile, although the profile no longer contains his birth date/age. Do you have a reliable source for your claim? -- intgr [talk] 17:01, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Well, citation 7 as of 31-Dec-2017 claims he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1984 so it is highly unlikely (but possible) that he was born in 1982. What's the high bar for birthdate verification on WP? Buzzm (talk) 00:03, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

External links modified
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Self-published warning in Viewpoints section
Given that the Viewpoints section is clearly just stating what Bruce's views are, wouldn't the use of his blog posts be allowed ABOUTSELF as there is not going to be a more verifiable source of his views than his own statements?

In other words, can't we remove that template? Calumapplepie (talk) 00:30, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Bruce Schneier


text: User talk:68.84.46.73

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

title: User talk:68.84.46.73


text:
Vanity (singer)

Denise Katherine Matthews (January 4, 1959 – February 15, 2016), known professionally as Vanity, was a Canadian singer, model, and actress. Known for her image as a sex symbol in the 1980s, she became an evangelist and renounced her career as Vanity in the 1990s.

Vanity was the lead singer of the female trio Vanity 6, which was created by the musician Prince. Known for their 1982 hit song "Nasty Girl", they disbanded in 1983, when she decided to embark on a solo career. Vanity released two solo albums on the Motown Records label, Wild Animal and Skin on Skin. She had minor hit singles with "Pretty Mess", "Mechanical Emotion", "Under the Influence", and "Undress" from the 1988 film Action Jackson. Vanity also had a successful career as an actress, starring in the films The Last Dragon (1985), and 52 Pick-Up (1986), and Action Jackson.

After years of drug abuse, which caused health issues, Matthews became a born-again Christian in 1992. She later devoted herself to her church in Fremont, California. Matthews died on February 15, 2016, at age 57, due to kidney failure.

Early life
Denise Katrina Matthews was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, on January 4, 1959, the daughter of Helga Senyk and Levia James Matthews. Her mother was of German-Jewish and Polish-Jewish descent, and she was born in Germany, while her father was of African-American descent and was born in Wilmington, North Carolina. Matthews had three sisters, Patricia, Deborah, Renay and several half siblings.

Her father died when she was 15 years old. Matthews revealed to Jet in 1993 that her father physically and verbally abused her for years. The abuse caused her to have a negative self-image. "For 15 years, he beat me badly... I wish I could see my father in heaven, but I won't. He's in hell," she said.

Early career: 1977–1981
Matthews began entering local beauty pageants before moving to Toronto, where she modeled. She won the Miss Niagara Hospitality title in 1977 and went on to compete for Miss Canada in 1978. At age 17, she moved to New York City to further her career. She signed with Zoli Model Agency. However, because she was short in stature, her modeling career was limited to commercials and photoshoots and excluded runway work. Vanity appeared in commercials for Pearl Drops toothpaste before completing a modeling stint in Japan. She also appeared on Nightlife Unlimited’s album cover Let's Do It Again (1980)

Matthews had a small role in the horror movie Terror Train (1980), which was filmed in Montreal in 1979. She then went to Toronto to film the lead role in the B-movie Tanya's Island (1980). She was credited as D.D Winters for both films.

Music and acting career: 1982–1993
Matthews appeared on the cover of the funk band Cameo's album cover, Alligator Woman, released in March 1982. She had met musician Prince at the American Music Awards earlier that year. After learning that she could sing, Prince later invited her to front a girl group he had formed called The Hookers. Prince initially wanted to name her "Vagina," pronounced "va-geen-na," but she refused so they settled on Vanity, as he considered her to be the female form of himself. The group was renamed Vanity 6.

The group recorded one album, and had some success internationally with the single "Nasty Girl". They wore lingerie and Vanity's image became that of an erotic and sexy "nasty girl". "Prince created the whole Vanity 6 image. It bothered me at the time. I lied and said it was the image I wanted. I did it because he told me I had to do it. If I didn't do it, I wouldn't get paid. I got into it. I wanted the old Diana Ross image," she said.

Vanity and Prince appeared on the cover of the April 28, 1983, issue of Rolling Stone magazine. In August 1983, she abruptly left the group and turned down a role in the 1984 film Purple Rain, which went to her replacement, Apollonia Kotero. In 1984, Vanity signed with Motown Records as a solo artist and recorded the funk-pop album Wild Animal. She had mild success on the US pop and R&B charts with the singles "Pretty Mess" and "Mechanical Emotion".

In 1985, Vanity made her mainstream film debut in The Last Dragon, which featured her song, "7th Heaven." She wanted a role in the 1985 film The Color Purple, but Steven Spielberg thought she looked too young. In 1986, she released her second and last album, Skin on Skin, which produced the top 10 R&B hit "Under the Influence". That year, she also starred in Never Too Young to Die opposite John Stamos and she appeared in 52 Pick-Up.

In 1987, Vanity guest-starred in an episode of Miami Vice's third season. She went on to co-star in the 1988 film Action Jackson, her highest profile role, in which she starred opposite Carl Weathers, Craig T. Nelson, and Sharon Stone. Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times gave a negative review to Action Jackson, but believed Vanity's performance was "the movie’s one redeeming merit". She also appeared nude in the April 1988 issue of Playboy magazine.

Vanity had a role on numerous TV programs. She appeared in Friday the 13th: The Series in the episode entitled "Mesmer's Bauble" in 1989. She played a villain who tortured Nancy Allen's character in the 1990 TV movie Memories of Murder and appeared in an episode of Highlander: The Series in 1992. Her last role was in the film Kiss of Death in 1993.

Relationships
Matthews attended the American Music Awards where she met Prince in January 1982; they then began dating shortly after. She was also linked romantically to Adam Ant, who wrote the track "Vanity" about her on his 1983 Strip album, and Billy Idol.

During an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1987, Matthews announced that she and Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx were engaged. She often joked that she would become Vanity 6 (Sixx) again. In his memoir, The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, Sixx detailed their volatile relationship and drug use. He stated that Vanity taught him how to freebase cocaine.

On her first anniversary of sobriety, Matthews married football player Anthony Smith of the Oakland Raiders in 1995. While working as an evangelist in San Jose, she read about Smith's philanthropic activities in Los Angeles. "The Lord told me that I would go down to L.A. and minister to him," she told Ebony. They met in late February 1995, and three days later, she proposed to him. After a one-month whirlwind romance, they married at Smith's home in Playa del Rey in April. Smith later revealed that they often argued about her kind nature, which caused her to habitually invite homeless people into their home for food and showers and give out their home number to complete strangers. Due to his volatility, their marriage ended in 1996. After they separated, Smith was arrested for domestic violence involving another woman and was later convicted of three murders.

Religion
In 1992 Vanity met actor Sam J. Jones during the filming of Da Vinci's War. Jones invited Vanity to read the Bible with him during a lunch break. Shortly thereafter, Vanity became a born-again Christian, and in several interviews, she stated that she would not play any more sexualized roles. Simultaneously, she renounced her stage name Vanity and reverted to Denise Matthews. She traveled extensively throughout the South with her friend/agent Benjamin Jimerson-Phillips, giving her testimony of conversion to Christianity.

In 1994, Matthews was hospitalized for three months for near-fatal kidney failure from a drug overdose. She recalled later that after being rushed to the hospital, doctors said she had three days to live while on life support. It was Jimerson-Phillips, who then sent Western Union telegrams to Prince, notifying him of her condition. She explained that Jesus appeared to her at this time and spoke to her, saying that if she promised to abandon her Vanity persona, he would save her.

Upon her recovery, Matthews ended her performing career by cutting off all ties with Hollywood and shunning her former life in show business. She devoted herself to being a born-again Christian. In 1995, she said, "When I came to the Lord Jesus Christ, I threw out about 1,000 tapes of mine— every interview, every tape, every video, everything." Jimerson-Phillips stated: "I was there at her apartment at The Grand in Sherman Oaks, when she just started dumping things down the incinerator. I grabbed some of the items including a painting titled Tailspin, by famed artist Olivia; a cassette hand painted by Prince of unreleased music; and an assortment of other items I didn't want to see go into the trash. I even had to go down to the office and ask them to retrieve her gold album she had thrown away."

After a kidney transplant in 1997, Matthews dedicated the rest of her life full-time to Christ. She made speaking engagements at churches worldwide and she headed Pure Hearts Ministries in Fremont, California.

In 2010, Matthews released her autobiography, Blame It On Vanity: Hollywood, Hell and Heaven.

Illness and death
Due to kidney problems resulting from her decade-long cocaine addiction, Matthews had to undergo 20 minutes of peritoneal dialysis five times a day. She underwent a kidney transplant in 1997, but her health worsened in 2015 after she was diagnosed with sclerosing encapsulating peritonitis.

Matthews died in a Fremont, California, hospital on February 15, 2016, from kidney failure, aged 57. She left much of her estate to her church. After cremation, her ashes were scattered off the coast of Hawaii.

Studio albums

 * Wild Animal (1984)
 * Skin on Skin (1986)

Vanity 6

 * Vanity 6 (1982)

Soundtrack appearances

 * 1985: The Last Dragon; "7th Heaven"
 * 1988: Action Jackson; "Undress", "Faraway Eyes", and "Shotgun" with David Koz and featuring vocalist Kareem

Guest vocals

 * 1982: 1999, Prince; "Free" (backing vocals)
 * 1982: What Time Is It?, The Time; "The Walk" (spoken vocals)
 * 1986: El DeBarge, El DeBarge; "Secrets of the Night" (backing vocals)

Music videos

 * 1982: "Nasty Girl", "He's So Dull", and "Drive Me Wild"
 * 1984: "Pretty Mess"
 * 1985: "7th Heaven" (video clips were from the movie The Last Dragon)
 * 1986: "Under the Influence"
 * 1988: "He Turned Me Out", a song performed by The Pointer Sisters from the soundtrack of Action Jackson. Vanity's co-star in the movie, Carl Weathers, appears alongside her in the video.
 * 1991: "Vanity", a song performed by Dweezil Zappa. Vanity makes a cameo appearance

title: Vanity (singer)


text: User talk:68.10.99.101

title: User talk:68.10.99.101


text:
Talk:Echion (mythology)

Article composed of several sourses, all of which appear to be directly quoted from pantheon.org. see examples gigantes and argonauts. It appears that the content is protected as that the page says "© 1995-2004 Encyclopedia Mythica. All rights reserved.". I am therefore lableing as a speedy delete. Cavebear42 23:56, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Should be merged with "Echion" or, rather, deleted altogether. It is referred to from the wrong Echion and contains the same content as Echion from which it is referred. Ori Redler 23:15, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

title: Talk:Echion (mythology)


text:
User:Cavebear42

This is an unused user page, please see my talk page for comments. Cavebear42 23:40, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

title: User:Cavebear42


text: Category:Mars orbits

title: Category:Mars orbits


text: Category:Political science terminology

title: Category:Political science terminology


text:
Talk:The Den (disambiguation)

Animals?
What about den animals? Jeshii 23:59, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:The Den (disambiguation)


text: User talk:69.153.245.227

title: User talk:69.153.245.227


text:
Talk:De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver

Comments
Why was the descriptive table removed from this page? If there's a good reason, I'm fine with it, but otherwise I will revert the changes and accomodate the updates as I find the table to be a handy at-a-glance reference. -Lommer 00:01, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * The WikiProject Aircraft group determined after much discussion that the table's disadvantages outweighed its advantages, and all new pages are being created with an inline text specs section. Old articles are likewise being changed to the new standard.
 * -eric 00:50, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

 * Aha, I was not aware of WikiProject Aircraft, thanks for pointing it out. -Lommer 02:44, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Possible discrepancy
The article contains the following:
 * "Soon the factory was producing hundreds a month, and orders started pouring in from around the world. When production finally ceased in 1967, 1,657 DHC-2 Beavers had been built."

... given that the Beaver was in production for 20 years, this seems implausable... 100 a month would mean 1200 a year. Perhaps trying to source this would be a good thing. ++Lar: t/c 00:58, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

 * Good catch - the statement is obviously incorrect. Because the whole section is unreferenced it is very hard to tell where that came from. I have reworded it. - Ahunt (talk) 15:19, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Image added
As per WikiProject_Aircraft/page_content I suggest that this new image be removed from the article for three reasons:
 * 1) the technical image quality is very poor - washed out colours, poor focus, etc
 * 2) The primary focus of the picture is of a woman posing in front of the aircraft and not the aircraft and
 * 3) very little of the DHC-2 can be seen in the photo.

This is really a "tourist photo" and not of the normal image or subject quality one would expect in an encyclopedia. If anyone objects to removing it please indicate your reasons. - Ahunt (talk) 15:18, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

 * I have to agree, also introduction of the image has caused a white space problem. The image is still viewable in the commons category so little is lost IMO. There were possibly already too many images in the article before this one was added. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)    18:09, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

 * Thank you for your input, the image will be removed. - Ahunt (talk) 19:11, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect nomenclature
Minor quibble, the intro paragraph states, "The U.S. Army Air Corps purchased several hundred;" The U.S. Army Air Corps became the U.S. Army Air Forces in June of 1941, which became the United States Air Force on September 18, 1947, shortly after the aircraft's first flight. It is possible but highly unlikely, especially in peacetime, that the Army Air Forces ordered the Beaver before its first flight, but I believe the Air Force selected the Beaver in 1951. I changed the name and link as appropriate. JPAnalog (talk) 23:45, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

 * Actually you are quite right on your dates and such, but it was the US Army that bought them and operated them along with its fleet of Caribous, Hueys and such though the 1950s and 1960s as per the ref. The USAF had some too, but not as many as the Army did. The link that was provided to The U.S. Army Air Corps was the wrong link as you quite correctly pointed out, so I have fixed it. - Ahunt (talk) 00:40, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

 * Actually, the United States Army Air Corps was once the correct page, as it did at one time cover modern US Army air operations since 1947, for lack of a better article to cover it in. That content was split off a couple of years ago to a new article, United States Army Aviation Branch. So it's really a case of a link not being updated when the split was made, which is probably understandable as there were/are many links to the United States Army Air Corps page. Just an understandable oversingt, but a good catch on JP's part. Thanks! - BilCat (talk) 01:09, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

 * Bill: That makes good sense! I think we have it fixed now. - Ahunt (talk) 11:52, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

 * Again, minor quibble, thanks for correcting my correction! JPAnalog (talk) 21:12, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

 * No problem that is how Wikipedia works - collaboration. We are collectively much smarter than any one of us. - Ahunt (talk) 21:58, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Take off Length?
I know the correct answer is "it depends," but what sort of runway length are we looking at for one of these things? Paul, in Saudi (talk) 07:26, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
 * See List of STOL aircraft, which has a referenced field length for the Beaver amongst other aircraft.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:36, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Powerplant: 1 × Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Jr. radial engine, 450 hp (336 kW) each
wtf is with each when it has single engine and when clicking edit theres no each there, really strange snuff that wiki is — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.92.252.55 (talk) 00:54, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Possible new lead photo
I recently took a new photo of this aircraft. Compared to the existing photo, my photo is technically superior in terms of resolution, sharpness, noise, as well as in composition. Would it be okay to replace the current lead photo with the new one? dllu (t,c) 03:01, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

 * Your cropped version is pretty good. What would be ideal is if we could get a good in-flight image as per WP:AIRCRAFT-IMAGES. - Ahunt (talk) 18:01, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

 * I've swapped a pretty decent in-flight image into the infobox and inserted my photo into the article body in its place. dllu (t,c) 23:20, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

 * I thought that in-flight image was the worst one in the article, just poor exposure, hard to see any detail and flat. I went though all the commons images and found a better in-flight one. See what you think of that. - Ahunt (talk) 23:35, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

 * Looks good to me dllu (t,c) 05:49, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

 * Noting that WP:AIRCRAFT-IMAGES is a wikiproject guideline of WikiProject Aviation rather than a Wikipedia policy, it seems to me that in this case File:De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver N72355 Kenmore 2 crop.jpg is the best image for the lede. This is far larger than the current lede image, and shows the aircraft's ability to float on water. It seems to me that this new image is highly informative and of the best technical quality, and is therefore best suited for the lede. --Pine✉ 07:02, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

 * I disagree. The size of the image is not that relevant. The current image has sufficient resolution to be used and also shows the aircraft in flight, which is preferred in the consensus standard. There is no need to show that floats fitted to an aircraft do actually float. Also the image you have proposed is a high aspect ratio which doesn't work as well in the infobox. - Ahunt (talk) 13:35, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

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Zero-hour fatigue-life (airframe)
That deserves a little amplification I think, by a better link than the generic materials fatigue article or by an in-line explanation. If we did footnotes I'd say it should be a footnote, actually. Midgley (talk) 10:19, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Do you mean, to better explain what "zero-hour fatigue-life" means in this context? I admit I'm not entirely sure myself, but I assumed this was a rating for a new or rebuilt airframe which has not been exposed to fatigue cycles, rather than say an infinite fatigue rating. But I also can't find a definition. So yes, I agree an explanatory footnote would be helpful. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 15:42, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

 * The term "zero-hour fatigue-life" basically means an airframe that has been re-manufactured such that it is effectively a new airframe. Usually the process will include re-sparring, i.e., replacing the wing and tailplane main spars and other load-bearing items that are important to the structural integrity, and hence safety, of the aircraft. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.30.162.232 (talk)

Severe accident in Sweden 8 july 2021
There was a severe accident i Sweden on the 8 july 2021 killing 9 people. A swedish wiki page exists. My note was deleted. Is this accident not significant enough ?

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flygolyckan_i_%C3%96rebro_2021

Franke 1 (talk) 12:39, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes indeed it was a significant accident with nine persons dead. However the Swedish Wikipedia page on the accident is not an en.wikipedia link. Even so, I have noted this as a significant accident on this page, and I am sure that once US and Canada editors come on board, they will make an article and edit my edit

boopolo (talk) 12:56, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

After checking through the recent edits on this, I see the OP has deleted other significant news on this incident. I would suggest that before deleting, one would use this talk page, or create an new article themselves. Deleting true and honest news is not what Wikipedia is about, regardless of your Wiki score. For the general public, it may be seen that the editors here are 'covering up', or have some connection to the manufacturer. boopolo (talk) 14:12, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

 * There have been over 300 Beaver crashes and over 660 deaths, so we are not going to list them all here as it would dwarf the aircraft article. Beavers crash a lot, it is a common occurrence. We have an agreed consensus for including accidents here and that is that they require a Wikipedia article first, before they are linked here. You can also note even without this consensus, we would use the WP:AIRCRASH standard for whether to include this accident. There were no notable people killed in the accident (people who already have a bio on Wikipedia) and at this point there is no indication of any lasting effects from the accident, like airworthiness directives, etc. It looks like just a loss of control or simple mechanical failure. - Ahunt (talk) 14:48, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I honestly think you Ahunt should inhibit yourself from editing this article. You have no right to delete others posts or mine, just because you feel 9 deaths is not significant. To me it sounds that like you are using your Wiki quantity edits to bully others. As far as I see your deletions are bordering on vandalism. Others may think (right or wrong) you are connected with the manufacturer and therefore biased. One way or the other, you are trying to depress the truth, and do not delete my edits again without consultation on this page. (talk) 16:18, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

 * Okay you need to read WP:AGF, WP:CONSENSUS and WP:NPA before you go any further. You also need to stop edit warring to force your own way here. - Ahunt (talk) 15:22, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

 * I concur that this is, at present, a minor though tragic accident that doesn't merit inclusion at this point, as explained by Ahunt. Users also need to realize that this is an encyclopedia, not forum, and users are free to remove any content that they believe is not worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. Users make "posts" on talk pages, not the articles. Users who repeatedly add content against consensus and guidelines can and will be reportied for edit warring, and mzy be blocked by an administrator to prevent further disruption. BilCat (talk) 21:38, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

 * It is my opinion that this is indeed a serious incident and it was on the front page of most newspaper/news channels including the BBC. Ahunt chose to revert my edit (and others before that) without discussing it here on the talk page (shoot first, and ask questions afterwards). I on the other hand reverted just once. I am not warring with anybody. I am a very much casual editor for several years, and mostly revert vandalism. However, just because I do not have tens of thousands of edits does not mean I should not be allowed my opinion without been threatened with blocks. I once again state, in my opinion this was serious incident with 9 fatalities. In fact was probably the most serious one plane accident involving this aircraft since it was brought into service. I apologize Ahunt for calling your reverts out as vandalism. However, putting warning on my talk page is unfortunate and unhelpful. Boopolo (talk) 00:32, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

 * The correct sequence is explained at WP:BRD: you put it in, I reverted it. I am not required to bring it to the talk page to remove it, especially when it violates the existing consensus on inclusion, you needed to bring it here to the talk page for discussion to add it back in.

 * We have a longstanding consensus not to include light aircraft accidents like this one. They may be tragic for those involved, but they are very common and not notable. We have more than 300 other Beaver accidents and more than 660 deaths that are similar. I have indicated why this is not notable, as there are no notable people involved (no people with biographies on Wikipedia) and there are no lasting effects from this crash (no airworthiness directives, no service letters, no changes to ATC or maintenance procedures). If you want this accident included you need to demonstrate how it meets at least one of those two parameters, otherwise it is non-notable. - Ahunt (talk) 00:44, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

I am here from a request for full protection at WP:RFPP. Is the claimed edit warring over this edit? Normally I would protect but not in a case where the edit is clearly outside normal procedure. Articles sometimes contain comments but they follow a consensus on talk. Articles are not available for editors to post personal thoughts. Please do not attempt that again. I have no opinion on whether the particular crash should be included but I am inclined to believe the statements above that consensus is against including all incidents. If admin attention is needed, please ping me. @Boopolo: You need to follow WP:DR. Johnuniq (talk) 01:52, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * At the time I was not aware that the footnote ("Please do not add any new accidents here unless there is already a Wikipedia article about the accident to link to. There have been hundreds of Beaver accidents and most are not notable. Ask first on the talk page if you are unsure.") could not be added to. I am sorry for that. I agree that all incidents involving accidents should not be included in the main, as this would not be practical. However this particular accident is the worst regarding fatalities (9) with this aircraft. If the consensus here is not to publish, so be it. --Boopolo (talk) 02:41, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I hadn't noticed that note either. That criteria (that an incident should only be mentioned if there is a Wikipedia article about the incident) is standard across many articles, for example see WP:WTAF. It's a useful procedure. Johnuniq (talk) 04:10, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, that was pointed out above, but the original poster of this talk section Franke 1 already pointed out that there is a Swedish Wikipedia article on this plane crash --Boopolo (talk) 05:18, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * That's not the same as an article here. Different Wikipedias do things differently. Johnuniq (talk) 10:29, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

 * An English article was created yesterday at Skydive Örebro DHC-2 Turbo Beaver crash. It's a likely target for AfD, but I'm not going to nominate it myself at this point. As an article has been created now, I'd support a brief summary being added in the Accident section. Also, some details from the previous submission could be added to the new article, but be sure to mention this article for attribution purposes in the edit summary. BilCat (talk) 23:02, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Someone has already added the edit. I inserted my original ref link from the bbc, as that is where I first read the story --Boopolo (talk) 06:16, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

See Swedish DHC-2 fatal crash probe urges formal rating training for skydive pilots. Would that be sufficient to make the incident notable? (Since the recommendation is recent, it doesn't mean the previous deletion of the accident article was improper. Rather, the new recommendation would make the incident notable.) BilCat (talk) 16:48, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * While that is an interesting recommendation from the accident board, it is quite possible that the regulatory authority will not implement that. I am not sure how often that occurs in Sweden but in the US and Canada the regulatory authorities often don't implement accident board recommendations calling for yet more regulations, for a myriad of reasons. I would wait until there is an actual change implemented to say it meets WP:LASTING. - Ahunt (talk) 17:59, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I didn't know how binding such recommendations where, hence my asking. BilCat (talk) 22:23, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The short answer is "they're not" and are often not acted on. I guess we will see over time! - Ahunt (talk) 22:33, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver


text:
Mike Pallagi

Mike Pallagi (born August 19, 1975 in Alexandria, Virginia) is an American screenwriter, producer, copywriter, and novelist.

He has worked for clients like Nintendo, Arizona State Fair, JCPenney, McDonald's, InSinkErator, The Arizona Republic, Dremel, Bank of America, General Electric, and others; as a producer of the Crispin Glover film What Is It? (which played at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival); and as a freelance script doctor on several independent features. Pallagi holds a degree in English Literature from Arizona State University. In September 2011, he published his first novel, Dax Klick and the Ancient City of Bronze.

Filmography

 * What Is It? (2005) – producer

title: Mike Pallagi


text:
Chabazite

Chabazite is a tectosilicate mineral of the zeolite group, closely related to gmelinite, with the chemical formula. Recognized varieties include Chabazite-Ca, Chabazite-K, Chabazite-Na, and Chabazite-Sr, depending on the prominence of the indicated cation.

Chabazite crystallizes in the triclinic crystal system with typically rhombohedral shaped crystals that are pseudo-cubic. The crystals are typically twinned, and both contact twinning and penetration twinning may be observed. They may be colorless, white, orange, brown, pink, green, or yellow. The hardness ranges from 3 to 5 and the specific gravity from 2.0 to 2.2. The luster is vitreous.

It was named chabasie in 1792 by Bosc d'Antic and later changed to the current spelling.

Chabazite occurs most commonly in voids and amygdules in basaltic rocks.

Chabazite is found in India, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland, Bohemia, Italy, Germany, along the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, Oregon, Arizona, and New Jersey.

Synthetic chabazite
Many different materials that are isostructural with the chabazite mineral have been synthesized in laboratories. SSZ-13 is a CHA type zeolite with an Si/Al ratio of 14. This is a composition not found in nature.

title: Chabazite


text:
Edgerton Highway

The Edgerton Highway is a minor highway in the U.S. state of Alaska that extends 33 mi from the Richardson Highway near Copper Center to the town of Chitina. The McCarthy Road, within the Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park and Preserve, is a 58 mi extension from Chitina to McCarthy.

The Edgerton Highway, named for U.S. Army Major General Glen Edgar Edgerton, a member of the Alaska Road Commission, follows an old pack trail along the Copper River, and is paved. The popular dip-net salmon fishery in Chitina causes the highway to be fairly heavily used in summer. It is part of Alaska Route 10.

Route description
The Edgerton Highway begins at its junction with the Richardson Highway at Pippin Lake in the rural community of Kenny Lake. The highway travels east-northeast through rural Kenny Lake before reaching an intersection with the Old Edgerton Highway and turning southeast. The highway continues through several miles of forest along the Copper River, crossing several small affluents. The roadway passes the Chitina Airport, ending at its junction with the McCarthy Road after passing through the very small town of Chitina.

Recreation site
Liberty Falls State Recreation Site is located at mile 23 of the highway. It is one of the smaller units of the Alaska State Parks system, at only 10 acre. The site features a small campground and picnic area and, as the name suggests, a close-up view of a waterfall and the canyon created by Liberty Creek as it runs down to the Copper River.

title: Edgerton Highway


text:
Shrinky Dinks

Shrink art, Shrinky Dinks, or Shrinkles is a toy and activity kit consisting of sheets of polystyrene which can be cut with standard household scissors. When heated, the cut shapes become about nine times thicker while their horizontal and vertical dimensions reduce to about one-third the original size, resulting in hard, flat forms which retain their initial color and shape. They reached the height of their popularity in the 1980s and are still available from retailers. They can be used for a variety of things like charms and pins. Most sets are pre-printed with outline images of popular children's characters or other subjects, which are then colored in before baking.

History
Shrinky Dinks were invented in 1973 by Betty Morris and Kate Bloomberg, two housewives in Brookfield, Wisconsin, as a Cub Scout project with their sons. The first kits were sold at a local shopping mall and became very popular. Shrinky Dinks were soon licensed to be manufactured by the major toy companies of the time such as Milton Bradley, Colorforms, Western Publishing and Skyline Toys.

Alex Brands acquired Shrinky Dinks in 2014. As of 2020, the original brand Shrinky Dinks is owned by Just Play Products.

Usage
The base material consists of thin, flexible polystyrene plastic (#6) sheets. Prior to heating, the plastic sheets can be colored with felt-tip pens, acrylic paint, colored pencils, etc. and cut into shapes. However, oily or waxy substances (such as cheap colored pencils, crayons or oil paint) are not suitable because they melt or burn in high heat. When heated with the Easy-Bake Oven, a conventional oven, or a heat gun, the plastic shrinks and becomes thicker and more rigid, while retaining the colored design.

Although Shrinky Dinks are primarily an arts and crafts product marketed for children, adult crafters and artists also use the product for jewelry making and other projects. Blank sheets are available in bulk for this purpose.

Applications
In 2008, University of California, Irvine Professor Michelle Khine applied Shrinky Dinks to create tiny structures for the application of microfluidics to topics such as stem cell research. In 2022, Michelle Khine researched the use of Shrinky Dinks for microscale diagnostics and wearable biosensors for monitoring health.

In 2009, an art therapy supervision class at Emporia State University explored the use of Shrinky Dinks in art therapy. In 2014, Shrinky Dinks were presented as an art therapy medium in a workshop at the American Art Therapy Association Conference.

In 2014, a team from Harvard University and MIT used Shrinky Dinks to create self-assembling robots.

In popular culture
In 1992, the California rock band Sugar Ray formed with the name "Shrinky Dinx", but later changed it upon threat of lawsuit from the Milton Bradley Company.

title: Shrinky Dinks


text:
WDDX

WDDX (Web Distributed Data eXchange) is a programming language-, platform- and transport-neutral data interchange mechanism designed to pass data between different environments and different computers.

History
WDDX was created by Simeon Simeonov of Allaire Corporation in 1998, initially for the ColdFusion server environment. WDDX was open-sourced later that year.

Usage
WDDX is functionally comparable to XML-RPC and WIDL. The specification supports simple data types such as number, string, boolean, etc., and complex aggregates of these in forms such as structures, arrays and recordsets (row/column data, typically coming from database queries).

The data is encoded into XML using an XML 1.0 DTD, producing a platform-independent but relatively bulky representation. The XML-encoded data can then be sent to another computer using HTTP, FTP, or other transmission mechanism. The receiving computer must have WDDX-aware software to translate the encoded data into the receiver's native data representation. WDDX can also be used to serialize data structures to storage (file system or database). Many applications use WDDX to pass complex data to browsers where it can be manipulated with JavaScript, as an alternative to JSON.

Example from php.net:

Adoption
WDDX is mainly used by ColdFusion and, as February 2022, still supported by Adobe.

Outside ColdFusion, libraries exist to read or write this format, Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, C++, .NET, Actionscript, lisp, Haskell, Perl.

PHP used to offer a comprehensive support for WDDX, which could be used as a format to store session information until the version 7.4. It has been removed since from the base language, but still available through PECL. The rationale was a lack of standardization of the format, and new formats like JSON more mainstream. A vulnerability was fixed in 2007.

title: WDDX


text:
Albert of Monaco

Albert of Monaco may refer to:

 * Albert I, Prince of Monaco (1848–1922), who reigned as Prince of Monaco from September 10, 1889, to June 26, 1922
 * Albert II, Prince of Monaco (born 1958), son of Prince Rainier III, and the current reigning Prince of Monaco since April 6, 2005

title: Albert of Monaco


text: Category:Polish sculptors

title: Category:Polish sculptors


text:
Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil

Izz El-Deen Sobhi Sheikh Khalil (alternately Ezzeddine) (عز الدين الشيخ خليل) (circa 1962/1964 – September 26, 2004) was a senior member of the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas when he was killed by setting an automobile booby trap on September 26, 2004, in the al-Zahera district of southern Damascus, Syria. He was from the Shajaiyeh district of Gaza City. Although no specific groups have taken responsibility for his assassination, it is consistent in style with previous Israeli-sponsored assassinations, and with Israeli pledges to assassinate Hamas leaders.

The white Mitsubishi Pajero SUV he had just started was utterly demolished and burst into flames, charring the body almost beyond recognition. Pieces were assembled and scraped off the back seat to be carted to a nearby hospital for identification. Another car windshield and nearby ground-floor and second-story windows were shattered by the blast, and three Syrian civilians were injured.

Israeli military had said that two bus bombings that killed 16 civilians in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on August 31 would be answered with a renewed assassination campaign against Hamas leaders.

Khalil was exiled from the Palestinian territories in 1992, one among a group of some 400 Palestinian militants who were deported to Lebanon in the early 1990s. He based himself in Damascus with other senior Hamas leaders, which was safer than the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Khalil's name was rendered  Izz al-Din al-Sheikh Khalil by CNN, Izz Eldine Subhi Sheik Khalil by Fox News, Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil by the BBC, and Izz al-Din al-Shaikh Khalil by Al Jazeera.

title: Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil


text:
File talk:Dover Custom Impulse elevator control panel.jpg

Where is this picture useful?? I think Thirteenth floor is a good position for this image to be added to because that is exactly what this picture seems to be saying about the floors. Any objections to having this picture added?? 66.245.5.127 00:10, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * That sounds like a good place for it. (I put the picture on elevator as well.}   – Quadell (talk) (help)   00:15, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

Picture is being blocked by Ad blocking software
This image is being blocked by ad blocking software, because part of the image's URL is "/ad/"... I'm not sure how to fix that though. --Shadowlink1014 01:35, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


text: User talk:65.150.209.15

title: User talk:65.150.209.15


text:
Franklinite

Franklinite is an oxide mineral belonging to the normal spinel subgroup's iron (Fe) series, with the formula Zn2+Fe23+O4.

As with another spinel member magnetite, both ferrous (2+) and ferric (3+) iron may be present in franklinite samples. Divalent iron and/or manganese (Mn) may commonly accompany zinc (Zn) and trivalent manganese may substitute for some ferric iron.

At its type locality, franklinite can be found with a wide array of minerals, many of which are fluorescent. More commonly, it occurs with willemite, calcite, and zincite. In these rocks, it forms as disseminated small black crystals with their octahedral faces visible at times. It may rarely be found as a single large euhedral crystal.

Franklinite is a major ore of the element zinc. It is named after its local discovery at the Franklin Mine and Sterling Hill Mines in New Jersey.

In 2023, Franklinite was designated the state mineral of New Jersey.

title: Franklinite


text:
User:PJ

PJ - living 65 kilometres north about Stockholm, Sweden. I'm active on the Swedish language Wikipedia and Commons.

sv:Användare:PJ

title: User:PJ


text:
Box orbit

In stellar dynamics, a box orbit refers to a particular type of orbit that can be seen in triaxial systems, i.e. systems that do not possess a symmetry around any of its axes. They contrast with the loop orbits that are observed in spherically symmetric or axisymmetric systems.

In a box orbit, a star oscillates independently along the three different axes as it moves through the system. As a result of this motion, it fills in a (roughly) box-shaped region of space. Unlike loop orbits, the stars on box orbits can come arbitrarily close to the center of the system. As a special case, if the frequencies of oscillation in different directions are commensurate, the orbit will lie on a one- or two-dimensional manifold and can avoid the center. Such orbits are sometimes called "boxlets".

title: Box orbit


text:
Stac Electronics

Stac Electronics, originally incorporated as State of the Art Consulting and later shortened to Stac, Inc., was a technology company founded in 1983. It is known primarily for its Lempel–Ziv–Stac lossless compression algorithm and Stacker disk compression utility for compressing data for storage.

1983–1994
The original founders included five Caltech graduate students in Computer Science (Gary Clow, Doug Whiting, John Tanner, Mike Schuster and William Dally), two engineers from the industry (Scott Karns and Robert Monsour) and two board members from the industry (Robert Johnson of Southern California Ventures and Hugh Ness of Scientific Atlanta). The first employee was Bruce Behymer, a Caltech undergraduate in Engineering and Applied Science.

Originally headquartered in Pasadena, California and later in Carlsbad, California, the company received venture capital funding to pursue a business plan as a fabless chip company selling application-specific standard products to the tape drive industry. The plan was to include expansion into the disk drive market, which was much larger than the tape drive market. Following the success of Cirrus in the disk drive market, this was the real basis for venture capitalists' interest in Stac.

As part of the application engineering to adapt its data compression chips for use in disk drives, the company implemented a DOS driver that transparently compressed data written to a PC hard disk and decompressed the data transparently upon subsequent hard disk reads. In doing so they discovered that given the relative speed difference between the PC processor and the disk drive access times, it was possible to perform the data compression in software, obviating the need for a data compression chip in every disk drive, as they were planning to produce. This DOS driver was written in x86 assembly language under contract by Paul Houle.

In 1990 the company released Stacker, a disk compression utility. The product was highly successful, due to the relatively small capacities (20 to 80 megabytes) and high prices of contemporary hard drives, at a time when larger software packages such as Microsoft's new Windows user interface were becoming popular. On average, Stacker doubled disk capacity, and usually increased disk performance by compressing the data before writing and after reading, compensating for the relative slowness of the drives. Stac sold several million units of Stacker over the product's lifetime.

They also released a hardware product called STAC Coprocessor Card, which claimed to not only improve the compression of the files, but to decrease the time needed to compress files. Salient Software would license Stac's acceleration technology for use in their NuBus DoubleUp and PDS Bullet cards for the Macintosh, though they would use Salient's own DiskDoubler software.

1994–2002
At some time prior to 1996, the company relocated its main office from Carlsbad to Carmel Valley, in San Diego, and maintained a programming group in Estonia. After settling the lawsuit with Microsoft, Stac attempted to expand its product portfolio in the utility software segment by adding additional storage and communication titles through internal development and acquisition. The company scrambled to replace the revenues lost after the market for hard drive compression software collapsed with the inclusion of DoubleSpace in MS-DOS and the rapid decline in hard disk cost per megabyte. Using the funds from its IPO (1992) and the settlement with Microsoft, Stac acquired a remote desktop software product called "ReachOut". It acquired a server image backup product, "Replica", and internally developed a network backup product for workstations and laptops, and marketed this product first as "Replica NDM" and later as "eSupport Essentials". Much of the technology pioneered in Stac's network backup offering ultimately found its way into today's online backup solutions.

Meanwhile, Stac's original chip business continued to grow. In order to realize shareholder value, its chip subsidiary called Hifn, was spun off in 1998 in a primary public offering.

Stac then renamed the remaining utility software company to "Previo", and repositioned itself as a help desk and support organization tool provider. This effort was pursued while the dot-com bubble was bursting, and in 2002 management elected to take the unusual step of selling Stac's remaining technology assets (to Altiris) and returning its remaining cash to shareholders before dissolving.

Microsoft lawsuit
In 1993, Microsoft released MS-DOS 6.0, which included a disk compression program called DoubleSpace. Microsoft had previously been in discussions with Stac to license its compression technology, and had discussions with Stac engineers and examined Stac's code as part of the due diligence process. Stac, in an effort led by attorney Morgan Chu, sued Microsoft for infringement of two of its data compression patents. Meanwhile, Microsoft had filed an injunction against Stac to prevent the company from selling its Stacker 3.1 software for Windows and DOS, attracting claims from Stac representatives that with a licensing deal having been made with rival DOS vendor, Novell, and with Microsoft no longer facing action from the Federal Communications Commission, the company had become emboldened to "dominate the data compression market". In 1994, a California jury ruled the infringement by Microsoft was not willful, but awarded Stac $120 million in compensatory damages, coming to about $5.50 per copy of MS-DOS 6.0 that had been sold. The jury also agreed with a Microsoft counterclaim that Stac had misappropriated the Microsoft trade secret of a pre-loading feature that was included in Stacker 3.1, and simultaneously awarded Microsoft $13.6 million on the counterclaim.

While Microsoft prepared an appeal, Stac obtained a preliminary injunction from the court stopping the sales of all MS-DOS products that included DoubleSpace; by this time Microsoft had already started shipping an "upgrade" of MS-DOS to its OEM customers that removed DoubleSpace. By the end of 1994, Microsoft and Stac settled all pending litigation by agreeing that Microsoft would make a $39.9 million investment in Stac Electronics, and additionally pay Stac about $43 million in royalties on their patents.

title: Stac Electronics


text: Category:Sports officiating

title: Category:Sports officiating


text:
Bernard C. Parks

Bernard C. Parks (born December 7, 1943) is an American politician who served as a member of the Los Angeles City Council, representing the 8th district in South Los Angeles from 2003 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, Parks served as Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department from August 1997 to May 2002.

Early life and education
Parks is a graduate of Daniel Murphy High School and attended Los Angeles City College and received a bachelor's degree from Pepperdine University. He earned a Master's Degree in public administration from the University of Southern California.

Career
During his tenure, the LAPD was rocked by a corruption and police brutality scandal involving the elite C.R.A.S.H. anti-gang unit of the Rampart Division in the overwhelmingly Latino Pico-Union and Westlake districts. The Police Commission, under Commission President Rick J. Caruso did not recommend Parks for reappointment as police chief. Parks was succeeded as chief by William Bratton.

In 2003, Parks won the seat on the Los Angeles City Council for Council District 8 representing South Los Angeles. He also unsuccessfully ran for the post of mayor in the 2005 elections, coming fourth in the primary. In 2008, Parks unsuccessfully sought to succeed Yvonne Brathwaite Burke on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, losing to Mark Ridley-Thomas in a runoff election. Term limits forced Parks out of the city council office in 2015. Marqueece Harris-Dawson won the District 8 election for the vacant seat, and replaced Parks on 1 July 2015.

title: Bernard C. Parks


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Talk:Mechanical puzzle

Ten billion barrel puzzle
Anybody know what the Nintendo Ten Billion Barrel puzzle is? I'm just curious. If somebody can point me to a source, I'll put the article in. --Barry 00:27, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)
 * It's at Nintendo tumbler puzzle (but feel free to move it to a better title or create links, I wasn't sure what the best title was.) —Blotwell 4 July 2005 02:31 (UTC)

VfD results
This article was nominated for deletion. The result was no consensus, but some merging/redirecting might be in order. For details, please see Votes for deletion/MoreKarlScherer. -- BD2412 talk 00:38, July 14, 2005 (UTC)

It was immediately listed again. The result was keep. Copyright issues are being resolved in the appropriate forum. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 04:33, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

 * As a result I have reverted it to the version before the import of the puzzlemuseum.com material. That article states that it can be freely reused in its entirety with appropriate credit. We therefore cannot put it in the editable Wikipedia or license it for other people to modify under the GFDL. --rbrwr± 20:35, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

100 or 12 moves ?
I have changed the sentence "The level of difficulty reached levels of up to 12 moves for the first piece, a scale humans would struggle to grasp".... back to what it was before, ie with a 100. This is because nobody has given any source that says that what is said in the German Wikipedia article de:Mechanische Geduldspiele is wrong - and this is where the 100 comes from. Regards

ACH 10:46, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps I should clarify, after reading what the page posted in the edit summary said. The sentence should mean that there have been analyses of up to the complexity given, so perhaps it does refer to a different Chinese wood knot. Not sure about it, though.

213.6.91.147 10:57, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Translation from German
I have finally finished the translation of the German article, and added it to the meager original article. Some questions remain, however:

 * you will notice one of the images is commented out - this is because I have not been able to find a good place to put it, as it belongs to the rather short section of "dexterity puzzle". Any solutions ?

 * Do we need the "simulated mechanical puzzles" section ? It does not really have much information, and it links to a non-existing article. Plus, some discussion of simulated mechanical puzzles is in the text.

 * Do we need "a few notable puzzles" ? Or should it be under "See Also" ?

These are just some - I am sure there are more, waiting for you to pick up on :).

Regards

ACH 22:52, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

External Links: Spam?
Those external links look like spam to me. Anybody think like me? ycc2106 12:15, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Care to nominate which ones you want to delete? To be fair, each one should be considered individually on its merits.  Sp in ni ng  Spark  14:59, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Snake Cube
Anybody have an idea where the Snake cube fits in the puzzle types? Soulrefrain (Talk) 00:29, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Some would call categorise this sort of thing as a combination puzzle (for which I recently created a category). However, my personal feeling is that it does not sit very comfortably in this category. It's more like an assembly puzzle to my mind  Sp in ni ng  Spark  14:48, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Disentanglement Puzzle
The disentanglement puzzle pictured is known as "The Deringer" (sans ring), and is commonly considered to be very difficult despite the fact that it looks so simple. Most puzzle selling sites rank it among the hardest disentanglement puzzles they sell. Additionally, in my personal experience the deringer was a much harder to solve than chinese rings variants with dozens of moves. The quote: "The image shows an easy version of this puzzle, which may still be solved by chance." should be changed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.203.237.75 (talk) 12:59, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Possible addition: Orb (US)/Orb-It (UK)
I own one of these, but can't find any good sources for information about it. The only webpage I found it mentioned on is a fanpage on mechanical puzzles. 67.135.49.211 (talk) 01:43, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

I used this Google search and got a good number of hits, most of them relevant. Some of them with info you could use in an article.  Sp in ni ng  Spark  14:45, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Notable puzzles
I think we should require that that the "notable puzzles" section requires a citation for notability (it should be the first of . . . oldest kind . . . etc) or else have an article which establishes notability through the articles cites. Otherwise the list will grow without limit and the "notable" heading will be meaningless as everybody adds their favourite puzzle.  Sp in ni ng  Spark  22:19, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Fold puzzles
The pictured example in this paragraph has me boggled, anyone have a solution for it? 130.237.5.115 (talk) 11:08, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

 * Please take questions to WP:Reference desk, this page is for improvements to the article, but here's a clue - think diagonals.  Sp in ni ng  Spark  18:06, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Impossible Object Re-Phrasing
The phrase "The hole is in effect too small to fit the arrow through it and there are no signs of gluing. How was it made?" from the "Impossible Objects" section needs editing to suit Wikipedia. Although this is probably from the articles original source, Wikipedia provides information, so if the construction methods of these objects are known, we should include them. If not, then this should be re-phrased or removed. Jonoerik (talk) 11:56, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Here is the traditional method- the arrow is of soft wood soaked or steamed until the head can be compressed in a vice. When it has dried in the compressed state the arrow is then inserted in a hole (a glass bottle with holes cut is popular) and then exposed to moisture to expand it. Saxophobia (talk) 15:01, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

NPOV/cleanup tags
This article has a number of issues, and to tag them all would deface the article. Instead, I will list some problems here:

 * The articles's quality is vastly reduced by its apparent lack of inline citations.
 * My concern about neutrality draws from this, especially with regard to comments on puzzle difficulty: In several instances, there are simple statements of difficulty (which is highly subjective without justification, making them inappropriate), none of which are backed up by citations.
 * The article could do with a fair amount of rewriting, with regard to Wikipedia's Manual of Style - for example, the article has issues with tone such as using the second person pronoun "you" and asking questions.

An edited version of the article highlighting problems can be found in my sandbox - where neutrality may be an issue due to tone or phraseology, text is bolded, variously with the addition of original research and citation tags (tags may also be found separate of bolding); where tone is simply inappropriate without hope for reconciliation, text is italicised.

I'd like to state that my criticism is in good faith: The article is very informative, and I appreciate greatly the work that's gone into it, but while I enjoyed reading it, I couldn't leave it to continue on in its current state; unfortunately, the subject matter is rather outside of areas I am familiar with (I chanced upon this page after Wiki-stumbling through several pages on mathematics), so the likelihood of me being able to actively improving the article is quite slim. I hope this article receives the improvement it deserves - I probably won't remember to check back here, so if you feel you've done a good job in rectifying the article's problems, go ahead and take down the tags. Thanks for reading. --Muna (talk) 08:28, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

 * I have taken off the neutrality tag. This is really not appropriate to the complaints you have on this article, the cleanup tag is quite adequate to cover those.  There is no POV dispute on this article, or if there is, you have not mentioned what is in dispute.  Lack of citations does not amount to a dispute.  Sp in ni  ng  Spark  12:07, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

 * I disagree that the neutrality tag isn't appropriate - the article shows bias by making (seemingly) opinionated and praising comments regarding puzzles, without any balance to these comments or citations to back them up. That is bias, that is a neutrality issue, I am disputing it. --Muna (talk) 19:49, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Ball-in-a-maze puzzle
I've just created a stub on Ball-in-a-maze puzzles. I guess there ought to be mention in this article?--Annielogue (talk) 21:23, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Simulated mechanical puzzles
I found a game called Interlocked which attempts to simulate interlocking puzzles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx_VUibFejI There's also this program called Burrtools which solves puzzles: http://burrtools.sourceforge.net/ 217.132.186.129 (talk) 18:17, 18 June 2011 (UTC) What do you think about adding those to the "Simulated mechanical puzzles" section?

 * I think finding reliable sources discussing these programs would be a first step. Also, the article currently says "While many computer games and computer puzzles simulate mechanical puzzles, these simulated mechanical puzzles are usually not strictly classified as mechanical puzzles."  Kind of implies that lists of examples is not wanted.  Spinning  Spark  00:22, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Mention 17x17x17?
The article mention "rubik's Cubes" up till 7x7x7. Would my Guinness World Record 17x17x17 cube be worth mentioning? It is commercially available as DIY kit in any desired quantity, albeit at a somewhat prohibitive price. And hundreds of blogs have posted about it.

-Guinness: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records/largest-order-rubiks-/-magic-cube

-Twisty Puzzles Forum: http://twistypuzzles.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22468

-Shapeways: http://www.shapeways.com/model/64058/over_the_top___17x17x17.html

-YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz43QuMyEzM

M. Oskar van Deventer (talk) 19:14, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I see no reason not to mention it here. A freely licensed image to go with it would be good also. Hellbus (talk) 04:36, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Source for the term "vexier"?
Never heard or read it before this article. It's not in any of my dictionaries. I thought it might be French, but it's not in my French dictionary, either. I like the sound of the term, but unless there's a citation (like if somebody just made it up), it really has to go. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.253 (talk) 01:39, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

title: Talk:Mechanical puzzle


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The Conquest of Granada

The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards (1672), by John Dryden, is a two-part tragedy about the Spanish conquest of Granada (1482–1491), and the fall of Muhammad XII of Granada, the last Nasrit ruler of the Emirate of Granada (1230–1492), in southern Iberia. As a stageplay from the period of the English Restoration (1660), The Conquest of Granada is an example of the heroic drama genre in which the playwright Dryden was a pioneer writer; the first performance of the play was in 1670 and the first publication of the play was in 1672.

Plot
The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards concerns the Battle of Granada (1482–1491), fought between the Moors and the Spanish, which led to the fall of the Emirate of Granada (1230–1492). The action concerns two factions of Moors, the Abencerrages and the Zegry. The hero of the play is Almanzor, who fights for the Moors, and falls in love with Almahide, who is betrothed to Boabdelin, the King of the Moors. Although Almahide reciprocates Almanzor's love, she will not betray her betrothal to King Boabdelin, who is emotionally distressed by jealousy of and military need for Almanzor in fighting the Spaniards during the Reconquista.

In the course of events, Almanzor and Almahide remain separated until the death of Boabdelin. Additional to the protagonist's love story, two other plots involve frustrated love: (i) Abdalla, brother of King Boabdelin, and Abdelmelich, leader of the Abencerrage faction, vie for the love of Lyndaraxa, sister of the Zegry leader; and (ii) Ozmyn, a young man from the Abencerrage faction, loves Benzayda, who is a Zegry woman. The course of the personal dram reveals that Almanzor is the lost son of the Duke of Arcos, but dutifully fights the Spaniards for the Moors.

Genre
The playwright John Dryden wrote The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards in closed couplets of iambic pentameter, and in the Preface to the printed edition of the play, Dryden proposed a new genre of drama that celebrated heroic figures and heroic actions in metre and rhyme that emphasised the dignity of heroic action. The innovation is the poetic diction in English metre and vocabulary that corresponded to the verse structure of Latin. The closed iambic couplet is also known as the heroic couplet. Concerning the substance of an heroic play, Dryden said that heroic drama must demonstrate the Classical virtues of strength of character and masculine decisiveness.

Satire
The fame of the play invited satire of The Conquest of Granada by other playwrights. One example is The Rehearsal, written by George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. Henry Fielding, in Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1730) also takes aim at the silliness of some of The Conquest of Granada.  For example, the lofty aims expressed in the "Preface" to Fielding's play seem mismatched to the material.

Performance
The original 1670 production of The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards was by the King's Company, and featured Edward Kynaston as "Mahomet Boabdelin, last King of Granada", Charles Hart as Almanzor, and Nell Gwyn as Almahide, Rebecca Marshall as Lyndaraxa, Elizabeth Boutell as Bezayda, and Edward Lydall as Prince Abdalla, William Beeston as Ozmyn, Richard Bell as the Duke of Arcos, and Michael Mohun as Abdemelech, Martin Powell as Gomel, Marmaduke Watson as Hamet, and William Cartwright as Abenamar, Elizabeth James as  Isabella and William Wintershall as Selin. Nell Gwyn spoke the Prologue to Part 1 of The Conquest of Granada.

title: The Conquest of Granada


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Diopside

Diopside is a monoclinic pyroxene mineral with composition. It forms complete solid solution series with hedenbergite and augite, and partial solid solutions with orthopyroxene and pigeonite. It forms variably colored, but typically dull green crystals in the monoclinic prismatic class. It has two distinct prismatic cleavages at 87 and 93° typical of the pyroxene series. It has a Mohs hardness of six, a Vickers hardness of 7.7 GPa at a load of 0.98 N, and a specific gravity of 3.25 to 3.55. It is transparent to translucent with indices of refraction of nα=1.663–1.699, nβ=1.671–1.705, and nγ=1.693–1.728. The optic angle is 58° to 63°.

Formation
Diopside is found in ultramafic (kimberlite and peridotite) igneous rocks, and diopside-rich augite is common in mafic rocks, such as olivine basalt and andesite. Diopside is also found in a variety of metamorphic rocks, such as in contact metamorphosed skarns developed from high silica dolomites. It is an important mineral in the Earth's mantle and is common in peridotite xenoliths erupted in kimberlite and alkali basalt.

Mineralogy and occurrence
Diopside is a precursor of chrysotile (white asbestos) by hydrothermal alteration and magmatic differentiation; it can react with hydrous solutions of magnesium and chlorine to yield chrysotile by heating at 600 °C for three days. Some vermiculite deposits, most notably those in Libby, Montana, are contaminated with chrysotile (as well as other forms of asbestos) that formed from diopside. At relatively high temperatures, there is a miscibility gap between diopside and pigeonite, and at lower temperatures, between diopside and orthopyroxene. The calcium/(calcium+magnesium+iron) ratio in diopside that formed with one of these other two pyroxenes is particularly sensitive to temperature above 900 °C, and compositions of diopside in peridotite xenoliths have been important in reconstructions of temperatures in the Earth's mantle.

Chrome diopside is a common constituent of peridotite xenoliths, and dispersed grains are found near kimberlite pipes, and as such are a prospecting indicator for diamonds. Occurrences are reported in Canada, South Africa, Russia, Brazil, and a wide variety of other locations. In the US, chromian diopside localities are described in the serpentinite belt in northern California, in kimberlite in the Colorado-Wyoming State Line district, in kimberlite in the Iron Mountain district, Wyoming, in lamprophyre at Cedar Mountain in Wyoming, and in numerous anthills and outcrops of the Tertiary Bishop Conglomerate in the Green River Basin of Wyoming. Much chromian diopside from the Green River Basin localities and several of the State Line Kimberlites have been gem in character.

As a gem
Gemstone quality diopside is found in two forms: black star diopside and chrome diopside (which includes chromium, giving it a rich green color). At 5.5–6.5 on the Mohs scale, chrome diopside is relatively soft to scratch. Due to the deep green color of the gem, they are sometimes referred to as Siberian emeralds, although they are on a gemological level completely unrelated, emerald being a precious stone and diopside being a semi-precious stone.

Green diopside crystals included within a white feldspar matrix are also sold as gemstones, usually as beads or cabochons. This stone is often marketed as 'green spot jasper' or green spot stone'.

Violane is a manganese-rich variety of diopside, violet to light blue in color.

Etymology and history
Diopside derives its name from the Greek dis, "twice", and òpsè, "face" in reference to the two ways of orienting the vertical prism.

Diopside was discovered and first described about 1800, by Brazilian naturalist Jose Bonifacio de Andrada e Silva.

Potential uses
Diopside based ceramics and glass-ceramics have potential applications in various technological areas. A diopside based glass-ceramic named 'silceram' was produced by scientists from Imperial College, UK during the 1980s from blast furnace slag and other waste products. They also produced glass-ceramic is a potential structural material. Similarly, diopside based ceramics and glass-ceramics have potential applications in the field of biomaterials, nuclear waste immobilization and sealing materials in solid oxide fuel cells.

title: Diopside


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Common echymipera

The common echymipera (Echymipera kalubu), or common spiny bandicoot, is a bandicoot. It is long-snouted even by bandicoot standards. The upper parts are a coarse reddish-brown, flecked with spiny buff and black hairs. The tail is short and almost hairless. Length varies between 30 and 40 cm, with the tail accounting for an additional 8 to 10 cm; the weight is from 0.6 to 2 kg.

Names
The name kalubu, from which the scientific name is derived, is from the Ma'ya language of the Raja Ampat Islands.

Distribution
The common echymipera is native to New Guinea. Its presence in the Admiralty Islands is due to human introduction several thousand years ago, but not before 13,000 B.P. However, unlike Phalangeridae species (cuscus), which have historically been widely introduced and distributed by humans, the Peramelidae (bandicoots) have generally not been spread as much via human introductions.

It is hunted for human consumption in New Guinea. The Common echymipera is a host of the Acanthocephalan intestinal parasite Australiformis semoni.

title: Common echymipera


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Ivan Serov

Ivan Alexandrovich Serov (Ива́н Алекса́ндрович Серóв; 13 August 1905 – 1 July 1990) was a Soviet intelligence officer who served as Chairman of the KGB from March 1954 to December 1958 and Director of the GRU from December 1958 to February 1963. Serov was NKVD Commissar of the Ukrainian SSR from 1939 to 1941 and Deputy Commissar of the NKVD under Lavrentiy Beria from 1941 to 1954.

Serov was active in organizing NKVD activities against anti-Soviet forces during the Soviet Invasion of Poland and World War II, including the Katyn massacre. Serov issued the Serov Instructions and helped organize the mass deportations of people from Poland, Baltic states and the Caucasus. Serov helped establish secret police forces in the Eastern Bloc after the war and played an important role in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Serov was removed from power in 1963 when his protégé Oleg Penkovsky was exposed as a double agent. Serov was stripped of his position, Communist Party membership and Hero of the Soviet Union award in 1965, and lived in obscurity until his death in 1990.

Early life and military career
Ivan Alexandrovich Serov was born on 13 August 1905 in Afimskoe, a village in the Vologda Governorate of the Russian Empire, into a Russian peasant family. In 1923, when he was 18-years-old, Serov joined the Red Army shortly after the end of the Russian Civil War. In 1926, he became a member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and in 1928 graduated from the Artillery Officers' School of Leningrad. A major step in his career as a Red Army officer was his attendance in the mid-1930s of Higher Academic Courses in the prestigious Frunze Military Academy. He married during these years and had two children: a son, Vladimir, who became an engineering officer in the USSR Air Force followed by a daughter, Svetlana.

Commissar of Ukraine
In 1939, Serov joined the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the main security agency and secret police of the Soviet Union. He was appointed to the high-ranking position of NKVD Commissar of the Ukrainian SSR in 1940. As well as performing his duties in this post, Serov was also responsible for the co-ordination of deportation from the Baltic States and Poland. He was one of the top ranked officials responsible for the Katyn massacre of Polish officer POWs.

In 1956, an article in Time magazine accused Serov of being responsible for the death of "hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian peasants" during this period. Serov was also a colleague in Ukraine of Nikita Khrushchev, the local Head of State.

Deputy Commissar of the NKVD
In 1941, Serov was promoted to Deputy Commissar of the NKVD as a whole, becoming one of the primary lieutenants of NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria. In this function, Serov was responsible for the mass deportation of a variety of Caucasian peoples, including the deportation of the Chechens. He issued the so-called Serov Instructions, which detailed procedures for mass deportations from the Baltic States, which was for some time confused with the NKVD Order No. 001223 by historians. He also coordinated the mass expulsion of Crimean Tatars from the Crimean ASSR at the end of World War II. Viktor Suvorov claims that in 1946, Serov had oversight of the execution of Andrey Vlasov and the rest of the command of the Russian Liberation Army, an organization that had co-operated with the Nazis in World War II.

Serov was one of the senior figures in SMERSH, the wartime counterintelligence department of the Red Army, Soviet Navy and NKVD troops, serving as a deputy to Viktor Abakumov. It was in this function that he founded the Ministry of Public Security, the secret police of the Soviet-backed Polish People's Republic until 1956, acting as its main Soviet adviser and organizer. Serov organized the persecution of the anti-Soviet Home Army and helped to establish Stalinism in Poland.

In 1945, Serov was transferred to the 2nd Belorussian Front and went to Berlin in May that year. He stayed there until 1947 and helped to organise a security agency that would become the Stasi, the secret police of the German Democratic Republic. Serov was also there to monitor and spy on Marshal Georgy Zhukov (who Stalin was personally suspicious of) while acting as his political advisor.

Chairman of the KGB
After the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953, Serov was one of the few senior members of the political police to survive the wave of demotions and forced retirements of Stalinist officials. Serov, who had Beria's trust, betrayed him when he conspired with officers of GRU to avoid his own downfall.

In March 1954, Serov was appointed Chairman of the KGB, making him head of the greater part of the Soviet secret police. Serov organized security for the tours of Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev in the United Kingdom, where he was decried by the British media as "Ivan the Terrible" and "the Butcher".

Hungary
Serov played a key role in the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 which attempted to overthrow the Soviet-backed Hungarian People's Republic. Serov was active in Hungary, sending reports to the Kremlin from Budapest, and escorting visiting Soviet Presidium leaders Anastas Mikoyan and Mikhail Suslov via an armoured personnel carrier into Budapest on 24 October, as there was too much shooting in the streets. Serov organized the deportation of Hungarian revolutionaries, including Nagy, and also tried stopping The Workers' Council of Budapest from negotiating for the return of deportees and political rights, using Soviet troops to prevent the council from meeting in the city's Sports Hall. Serov co-ordinated the abduction of Pál Maléter and the disruption of peace talks between the Red Army and the Hungarian forces.

Director of the GRU
In December 1958, Serov was removed from his post as Chairman of the KGB after hints by Khrushchev, who had said that Western visitors could expect that they "wouldn't see so many policemen around the place" and that the Soviet police force would undergo a restructuring. Serov was instead appointed as the Director of the GRU, with the official reason being a need to strengthen the agency's leadership. Serov was active in the Cuban Missile Crisis, helping the Soviet leadership with American intelligence.

Removal from power
In February 1963, Serov was dismissed as Director of the GRU when it was discovered that Oleg Penkovsky, a GRU colonel and his protégé, was a double agent spying for the British. The affair was an embarrassment and irreparably damaged his reputation. Khrushchev, feeling he could no longer trust Serov, had him appointed to an unimportant position as assistant to the commander of the Turkestan Military District. A month later, he was demoted to major general. In August, he was transferred to the Volga Military District. In November 1964, Serov wrote a letter to the Politburo expressing his dismay at his treatment in the aftermath of the Penkovsky affair. In April 1965, he was stripped of his party membership and dismissed. Serov spent the rest of his life unsuccessfully seeking rehabilitation in the eyes of the public, restoration of his party membership, and the return of his rank of general and Hero of the Soviet Union to him.

Death
Serov died in 1990 at the Central Military Clinical Hospital in Krasnogorsk. He was buried at the cemetery in the village of Ilyinskoye in Krasnogorsky District, Moscow Oblast.

Awards and decorations
SOURCE:
 * Soviet Union
 * jubilee medals

Serov's award of the Gold's Cross of the Virtuti Militari was posthumously deprived in 1995 by the decision of the President of Poland Lech Wałęsa.
 * Foreign

Personality
In MI5 files about Serov, British agents who had met him called him "something of a ladies' man," good mannered, carefully dressed and a moderate drinker. He displayed a considerable familiarity with detective fiction such as Sherlock Holmes. His sense of humour was somewhat heavy, and his jokes were broadly sarcastic and, on occasion, strongly anti-Semitic.

According to the MI5 reports, Serov was "a capable organiser with a cunning mind".

Significance
Serov, although generally considered less significant than Beria in modern literature, helped to bring Stalinism to Europe and to Stalinise the Soviet Union. Serov's consolidation of Soviet power in Eastern Europe was helped by his organization of both the Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (Polish Intelligence Service) in Poland and the Stasi in East Germany.

Cultural references
Serov makes a brief appearance at the beginning of Ian Fleming's 1957 James Bond novel From Russia, With Love. Fleming writes that he "was in every respect a bigger man than Beria" and that "he, with Bulganin and Khrushchev, now ruled Russia. One day, he might even stand on the peak, alone."

Serov also briefly features in the 1950s novel Berlin by the German anti-Nazi writer Theodor Plievier, who lived in the USSR throughout the Hitler years. Plievier says Serov was nicknamed chramoi (which he translates as "Old Cripple Foot", хромой), a reference to a supposed deformity (presumably a club foot).

title: Ivan Serov


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Tristan A. Farnon

Tristan Alexander Farnon is an American webcomic author, creator of comic strip Leisure Town, the Silent Key podcast and Spigot. He is one of the founding creators of the Microsoft Comic Chat-based webcomic Jerkcity, now known as Bonequest.

Leisure Town
Leisure Town features photographs of bendable toy figures digitally superimposed onto separately photographed backgrounds to create each frame. While the "characters" are children's toys, the comics explore mature themes. The strip ran from 1997 to 2003 (although in a reduced format from 2001 to 2003); some limited additional content was published in what appears to have been a one-time event in 2005. The strip is still being published on the Internet, but no new content has been published since 2005.

title: Tristan A. Farnon