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R68 (New York City Subway car)

The R68 is a B Division New York City Subway car order consisting of 425 cars built by the Westinghouse-Amrail Company (aka Francorail), a joint venture of Westinghouse, ANF Industrie, Jeumont Schneider, and Alsthom. The cars were built in France from 1986 to 1988 and shipped through New York Harbor. Of the cars in the fleet, 416 are arranged in four-car sets while the other nine are single cars.

The R68 was the third R-type contract to be built with 75 ft cars (the previous two being the R44 and R46). The first R68 train entered service on June 20, 1986. The R68's manufacturers suffered from significant system integration problems, and the fleet became known as a "lemon" in its early years, but its performance was improved following modifications by the New York City Transit Authority. In the 2010s, a small number of R68s received experimental upgrades.

Description
The R68 was the third R-type contract to be built with 75 ft cars (the previous two being the R44 and R46), which have more room for sitting and standing passengers per car than the 60 ft cars that were used previously and afterward. Like the R44s and R46s, which are also 75 ft long, they are prohibited from running on the BMT Eastern Division lines (J, L, M & Z trains) because of tight curves. This order was evolved from the R55, a proposed car that was considered in the early 1980s, but never left the drawing board, or purchased due to a lack of funding. Instead, more attention was paid to replacing the R12, R14, R15, and R17 fleets of the A Division, which were over 30 years old and worn-out at the time.

The cars, numbered 2500–2924, cost about $1 million each. They replaced many R10s dating from 1948, all remaining 6300-series R16s dating from 1954 to 1955, and some R27s and R30s dating from 1960 to 1962. The cars are built with stainless steel, and are graffiti-resistant.

The R68s are currently based in the Concourse Yard in the Bronx (cars 2500–2775) and the Coney Island Complex in Brooklyn (cars 2776–2924). The Concourse sets are currently assigned to the D, while most Coney Island sets are currently assigned to the, N, Q, and W, and cars 2916–2924 are assigned to the Franklin Avenue Shuttle. As built, the R68s were originally single units, with a full-width cab on one end and a half-width cab on the other end. The R68s on the shuttle remain as single units with OPTO switches added, while the rest of the fleet were reconfigured into sets of four.

History
On October 15, 1982, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced that it would purchase 225 cars from Westinghouse-Amrail. The cars were built in France from 1986 to 1988 and shipped through New York Harbor. The first of the 225 cars were initially scheduled to arrive in January 1985, with the entire order complete in May 1986. The projected cost of the order was $210 million, or about $933,000 per car.

The delivery of the first R68 was made on February 4, 1986, but it failed to pass a sharp curve on the South Brooklyn Railway trackage on 38th Street in Brooklyn, and as a result, the curve had to be rebuilt and the radius eased somewhat, and the delivery took place on February 26, 1986. The 30-day acceptance test for the R68s began on the Brighton Line on April 13, 1986. The R68s' first entry to revenue service was on June 20, 1986, on the Brooklyn half of the divided D train with the first fleet consisting of cars 2500–2507. There were two contracts to supply the R68 fleet. The primary order consisted of cars 2500–2724, while the option order consisted of cars 2725–2924. The R68, therefore, became the first subway fleet to have an option order.

Initial problems
The R68's manufacturers suffered from significant system integration problems. Poor communication and coordination between the car body builder (ANF Industrie) and the chassis assembler (Westinghouse) led to operational failures. Due to this, the R68s became known as a "lemon". During the beginning of service, the R68s had problems with malfunctioning doors, faulty wiring, electrical controls that suddenly lost power, and malfunctioning air brakes. In addition, the fleet had a high breakdown rate. Another problem occurred on November 11, 1986, when a train of R68s failed to climb the grade on the Manhattan Bridge. The fleet had a Mean Distance Between Failure of 12,368 miles by the end of 1986—slightly above the system's average, but far less than the MDBF figures for the R62 and R62A fleets. By April 1987, the MTA's manager of car equipment engineering estimated that 20 percent of the R68 fleet had faulty controllers (which controlled braking and acceleration). Extensive work performed by the New York City Transit Authority provided solutions to the fleet's many problems.

The MTA was given a second option order of an additional 200 subway cars from Westinghouse-Amrail. However, due to problems from the manufacturer, the MTA awarded it to Kawasaki. Westinghouse-Amrail offered to have the 200 cars built for $1,012,000 each, while Kawasaki agreed to have them built for $958,000 per car. This order became the R68A.

Replacement and equipment tests
The R68s are scheduled to remain in service until at least 2025–2030. In 2010, the MTA proposed mid-life technological upgrades for the R68s, including LED destination signs and automated announcements.

LED lights were tested on cars 2860–2867. LED lights, door chimes (similar to those on the R142, R142A, and R179), and PA systems were tested on 2892–2895. Public Address and Intercom, LED displays, LCD displays, and CCTV, as well as Train Operator displays, were tested on cars 2844 and 2846. Display screens were tested on cars 2804–2807. LED lights and surveillance cameras were tested on 2792–2795. Each program gave out the date and time, and all retrofitted cars ran on the G. However, none of the displays indicated the next stops along the routes. All upgrades were later removed, and no further upgrades were implemented until early 2021, when car 2860 received a newer LED signage and CCTV system from Suzhou Huaqi Intelligent Technology. The entire consist was pulled from service on April 22, 2021, due to concerns over Suzhou Huaqi's ties to the Chinese government. It is unlikely that further technological improvements will be implemented in the near future.

In June 2023, the MTA released a document advertising an RFP for the R262 and R268 models, the latter of which is likely to replace the R68 and R68A.

title: R68 (New York City Subway car)


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Free and open-source software

Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that is available under a license that grants the right to use, modify, and distribute the software, modified or not, to everyone free of charge. The public availability of the source code is, therefore, a necessary but not sufficient condition. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term for free software and open-source software. FOSS is in contrast to proprietary software, where the software is under restrictive copyright or licensing and the source code is hidden from the users.

FOSS maintains the software user's civil liberty rights via the "Four Essential Freedoms" of free software. Other benefits of using FOSS include decreased software costs, increased security against malware, stability, privacy, opportunities for educational usage, and giving users more control over their own hardware. Free and open-source operating systems such as Linux distributions and descendants of BSD are widely used today, powering millions of servers, desktops, smartphones, and other devices. Free-software licenses and open-source licenses are used by many software packages today. The free software movement and the open-source software movement are online social movements behind widespread production, adoption and promotion of FOSS, with the former preferring to use the terms FLOSS, free or libre.

Overview
"Free and open-source software" (FOSS) is an umbrella term for software that is simultaneously considered both free software and open-source software. The precise definition of the terms "free software" and "open-source software" applies them to any software distributed under terms that allow users to use, modify, and redistribute said software in any manner they see fit, without requiring that they pay the author(s) of the software a royalty or fee for engaging in the listed activities.

Although there is an almost complete overlap between free-software licenses and open-source-software licenses, there is a strong philosophical disagreement between the advocates of these two positions. The terminology of FOSS was created to be a neutral on these philosophical disagreements between the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Open Source Initiative (OSI) and have a single unified term that could refer to both concepts.

Free software
Richard Stallman's Free Software Definition, adopted by the FSF, defines free software as a matter of liberty, not price, and that which upholds the Four Essential Freedoms. The earliest known publication of this definition of his free software definition was in the February 1986 edition of the FSF's now-discontinued GNU's Bulletin publication. The canonical source for the document is in the philosophy section of the GNU Project website. , it is published in 40 languages.

Four essential freedoms of Free Software
To meet the definition of "free software", the FSF requires the software's licensing respect the civil liberties / human rights of what the FSF calls the software user's "Four Essential Freedoms".
 * The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
 * The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
 * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
 * The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this, you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Open source
The Open Source Definition is used by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) to determine whether a software license qualifies for the organization's insignia for open-source software. The definition was based on the Debian Free Software Guidelines, written and adapted primarily by Bruce Perens. Perens did not base his writing on the Four Essential Freedoms of free software from the Free Software Foundation, which were only later available on the web. Perens subsequently stated that he felt Eric Raymond's promotion of open-source unfairly overshadowed the Free Software Foundation's efforts and reaffirmed his support for free software. In the following 2000s, he spoke about open source again.

History
From the 1950s and on through the 1980s, it was common for computer users to have the source code for all programs they used, and the permission and ability to modify it for their own use. Software, including source code, was commonly shared by individuals who used computers, often as public-domain software (FOSS is not the same as public domain software, as public domain software does not contain copyrights ). Most companies had a business model based on hardware sales, and provided or bundled software with hardware, free of charge.

By the late 1960s, the prevailing business model around software was changing. A growing and evolving software industry was competing with the hardware manufacturer's bundled software products; rather than funding software development from hardware revenue, these new companies were selling software directly. Leased machines required software support while providing no revenue for software, and some customers who were able to better meet their own needs did not want the costs of software bundled with hardware product costs. In United States vs. IBM, filed January 17, 1969, the government charged that bundled software was anticompetitive. While some software was still being provided without monetary cost and license restriction, there was a growing amount of software that was only at a monetary cost with restricted licensing. In the 1970s and early 1980s, some parts of the software industry began using technical measures (such as distributing only binary copies of computer programs) to prevent computer users from being able to use reverse engineering techniques to study and customize software they had paid for. In 1980, the copyright law was extended to computer programs in the United States —previously, computer programs could be considered ideas, procedures, methods, systems, and processes, which are not copyrightable.

Early on, closed-source software was uncommon until the mid-1970s to the 1980s, when IBM implemented in 1983 an "object code only" policy, no longer distributing source code.

In 1983, Richard Stallman, longtime member of the hacker community at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, announced the GNU project, saying that he had become frustrated with the effects of the change in culture of the computer industry and its users. Software development for the GNU operating system began in January 1984, and the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was founded in October 1985. An article outlining the project and its goals was published in March 1985 titled the GNU Manifesto. The manifesto included significant explanation of the GNU philosophy, Free Software Definition and "copyleft" ideas. The FSF takes the position that the fundamental issue Free software addresses is an ethical one—to ensure software users can exercise what it calls "The Four Essential Freedoms".

The Linux kernel, created by Linus Torvalds, was released as freely modifiable source code in 1991. Initially, Linux was not released under either a Free software or an Open-source software license. However, with version 0.12 in February 1992, he relicensed the project under the GNU General Public License.

FreeBSD and NetBSD (both derived from 386BSD) were released as Free software when the USL v. BSDi lawsuit was settled out of court in 1993. OpenBSD forked from NetBSD in 1995. Also in 1995, The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache, was released under the Apache License 1.0.

In 1997, Eric Raymond published The Cathedral and the Bazaar, a reflective analysis of the hacker community and Free software principles. The paper received significant attention in early 1998, and was one factor in motivating Netscape Communications Corporation to release their popular Netscape Communicator Internet suite as Free software. This code is today better known as Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird.

Netscape's act prompted Raymond and others to look into how to bring the FSF's Free software ideas and perceived benefits to the commercial software industry. They concluded that FSF's social activism was not appealing to companies like Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the Free software movement to emphasize the business potential of sharing and collaborating on software source code. The new name they chose was "Open-source", and quickly Bruce Perens, publisher Tim O'Reilly, Linus Torvalds, and others signed on to the rebranding. The Open Source Initiative was founded in February 1998 to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize open-source principles.

While the Open Source Initiative sought to encourage the use of the new term and evangelize the principles it adhered to, commercial software vendors found themselves increasingly threatened by the concept of freely distributed software and universal access to an application's source code. A Microsoft executive publicly stated in 2001 that "Open-source is an intellectual property destroyer. I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business." Companies have indeed faced copyright infringement issues when embracing FOSS. For many years FOSS played a niche role outside of the mainstream of private software development. However the success of FOSS Operating Systems such as Linux, BSD and the companies based on FOSS such as Red Hat, has changed the software industry's attitude and there has been a dramatic shift in the corporate philosophy concerning its development.

Personal control, customizability and freedom
Users of FOSS benefit from the Four Essential Freedoms to make unrestricted use of, and to study, copy, modify, and redistribute such software with or without modification. If they would like to change the functionality of software they can bring about changes to the code and, if they wish, distribute such modified versions of the software or often − depending on the software's decision making model and its other users − even push or request such changes to be made via updates to the original software.

Privacy and security
Manufacturers of proprietary, closed-source software are sometimes pressured to building in backdoors or other covert, undesired features into their software. Instead of having to trust software vendors, users of FOSS can inspect and verify the source code themselves and can put trust on a community of volunteers and users. As proprietary code is typically hidden from public view, only the vendors themselves and hackers may be aware of any vulnerabilities in them while FOSS involves as many people as possible for exposing bugs quickly.

Low costs or no costs
FOSS is often free of charge although donations are often encouraged. This also allows users to better test and compare software.

Quality, collaboration and efficiency
FOSS allows for better collaboration among various parties and individuals with the goal of developing the most efficient software for its users or use-cases while proprietary software is typically meant to generate profits. Furthermore, in many cases more organizations and individuals contribute to such projects than to proprietary software. It has been shown that technical superiority is typically the primary reason why companies choose open source software.

Security and user-support
According to Linus's law the more people who can see and test a set of code, the more likely any flaws will be caught and fixed quickly. However, this does not guarantee a high level of participation. Having a grouping of full-time professionals behind a commercial product can in some cases be superior to FOSS.

Furthermore, publicized source code might make it easier for hackers to find vulnerabilities in it and write exploits. This however assumes that such malicious hackers are more effective than white hat hackers which responsibly disclose or help fix the vulnerabilities, that no code leaks or exfiltrations occur and that reverse engineering of proprietary code is a hindrance of significance for malicious hackers.

Hardware and software compatibility
Sometimes, FOSS is not compatible with proprietary hardware or specific software. This is often due to manufacturers obstructing FOSS such as by not disclosing the interfaces or other specifications needed for members of the FOSS movement to write drivers for their hardware - for instance as they wish customers to run only their own proprietary software or as they might benefit from partnerships.

Bugs and missing features
While FOSS can be superior to proprietary equivalents in terms of software features and stability, in many cases it has more unfixed bugs and missing features when compared to similar commercial software. This varies per case, and usually depends on the level of interest in a particular project. However, unlike close-sourced software, improvements can be made by anyone who has the motivation, time and skill to do so.

A common obstacle in FOSS development is the lack of access to some common official standards, due to costly royalties or required non-disclosure agreements (e.g., for the DVD-Video format).

Less guarantee of development
There is often less certainty of FOSS projects gaining the required resources and participation for continued development than commercial software backed by companies. However, companies also often abolish projects for being unprofitable, yet large companies may rely on, and hence co-develop, open source software. On the other hand, if the vendor of proprietary software ceases development, there are no alternatives; whereas with FOSS, any user who needs it still has the right, and the source-code, to continue to develop it themself, or pay a 3rd party to do so.

Missing applications
As the FOSS operating system distributions of Linux has a lower market share of end users there are also fewer applications available.

European Union
In 2017, the European Commission stated that "EU institutions should become open source software users themselves, even more than they already are" and listed open source software as one of the nine key drivers of innovation, together with big data, mobility, cloud computing and the internet of things.

In 2020 the European Commission adopted its Open Source Strategy 2020-2023, including encouraging sharing and reuse of software and publishing Commission's source code as key objectives. Among concrete actions there is also to set up an Open Source Programme Office in 2020 and in 2022 it launched its own FOSS repository https://code.europa.eu/.

In 2021 the Commission Decision on the open source licensing and reuse of Commission

software (2021/C 495 I/01) was adopted, under which, as a general principle, the European Commission may release software under EUPL or another FOSS license, if more appropriate. There are exceptions though.

In May 2022 the Expert group on the Interoperability of European Public Services came published 27 recommendations to strengthen the interoperability of public administrations across the EU. These recommendations are to be taken into account later in the same year in Commission's proposal of the "Interoperable Europe Act".

GPLv3 controversy
While copyright is the primary legal mechanism that FOSS authors use to ensure license compliance for their software, other mechanisms such as legislation, patents, and trademarks have implications as well. In response to legal issues with patents and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the Free Software Foundation released version 3 of its GNU General Public License (GNU GPLv3) in 2007 that explicitly addressed the DMCA and patent rights.

After the development of the GNU GPLv3 in 2007, the FSF (as the copyright holder of many pieces of the GNU system) updated many of the GNU programs' licenses from GPLv2 to GPLv3. On the other hand, the adoption of the new GPL version was heavily discussed in the FOSS ecosystem, several projects decided against upgrading to GPLv3. For instance the Linux kernel, the BusyBox  project, AdvFS, Blender, and the VLC media player decided against adopting the GPLv3.

Apple, a user of GCC and a heavy user of both DRM and patents, switched the compiler in its Xcode IDE from GCC to Clang, which is another FOSS compiler but is under a permissive license. LWN speculated that Apple was motivated partly by a desire to avoid GPLv3. The Samba project also switched to GPLv3, so Apple replaced Samba in their software suite by a closed-source, proprietary software alternative.

Skewed prioritization, ineffectiveness and egoism of developers
Leemhuis criticizes the prioritization of skilled developers who − instead of fixing issues in already popular open-source applications and desktop environments − create new, mostly redundant software to gain fame and fortune.

He also criticizes notebook manufacturers for optimizing their own products only privately or creating workarounds instead of helping fix the actual causes of the many issues with Linux on notebooks such as the unnecessary power consumption.

Commercial ownership of open-source software
Mergers have affected major open-source software. Sun Microsystems (Sun) acquired MySQL AB, owner of the popular open-source MySQL database, in 2008.

Oracle in turn purchased Sun in January 2010, acquiring their copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Thus, Oracle became the owner of both the most popular proprietary database and the most popular open-source database. Oracle's attempts to commercialize the open-source MySQL database have raised concerns in the FOSS community. Partly in response to uncertainty about the future of MySQL, the FOSS community forked the project into new database systems outside of Oracle's control. These include MariaDB, Percona, and Drizzle. All of these have distinct names; they are distinct projects and cannot use the trademarked name MySQL.

Oracle v. Google
In August 2010, Oracle sued Google, claiming that its use of Java in Android infringed on Oracle's copyrights and patents. In May 2012, the trial judge determined that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents and ruled that the structure of the Java APIs used by Google was not copyrightable. The jury found that Google infringed a small number of copied files, but the parties stipulated that Google would pay no damages. Oracle appealed to the Federal Circuit, and Google filed a cross-appeal on the literal copying claim.

As part/driver of a new socio-economic model
By defying ownership regulations in the construction and use of information—a key area of contemporary growth—the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) movement counters neoliberalism and privatization in general.

By realizing the historical potential of an "economy of abundance" for the new digital world, FOSS may lay down a plan for political resistance or show the way towards a potential transformation of capitalism.

According to Yochai Benkler, Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, free software is the most visible part of a new economy of commons-based peer production of information, knowledge, and culture. As examples, he cites a variety of FOSS projects, including both free software and open-source.

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

title: Free and open-source software


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Audrey Tang

Audrey Tang (born 18 April 1981) is a Taiwanese politician and free software programmer who has served as the 1st Minister of Digital Affairs of Taiwan from August 2022 to May 2024. She has been described as one of the "ten greatest Taiwanese computing personalities". In August 2016, Tang was invited to join Taiwan's Executive Yuan as a minister without portfolio, making her the first transgender person and the first non-binary official in the top executive cabinet. Tang has identified as "post-gender" and accepts "whatever pronoun people want to describe me with online." Tang is a community leader of Haskell and Perl and the core member of g0v.

Early life
Tang was born in Taipei to father Tang Kuang-hua and mother Lee Ya-ching. Lee Ya-ching helped develop Taiwan's first consumer co-operative, and co-developed an experimental primary school employing indigenous teachers. Tang was a child prodigy, reading works of classical literature before the age of five, advanced mathematics before six, and programming before eight, and she began to learn Perl at age 12. Tang spent part of her childhood in Germany. Two years later, she dropped out of junior high school, unable to adapt to student life. By the year 2000, at the age of 19, Tang had already held positions in software companies, and worked in California's Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur.

In late 2005, Tang began transitioning to female, including changing her English and Chinese names, citing a need to reconcile her outward appearance with her self-image. In 2017, Tang said, "I've been shutting reality off, and lived almost exclusively on the net for many years, because my brain knows for sure that I am a woman, but the social expectations demand otherwise." In 2019, Tang identified as "post-gender" or non-binary, responding to a request regarding pronoun preferences with "What's important here is not which pronouns you use, but the experience...about those pronouns... I'm not just non-binary. I'm really whatever, so do whatever."

The television news channel ETToday reported that Tang has an IQ of 180. Tang has been a vocal proponent for autodidacticism and anarchism.

Free software contributions
Tang initiated and led the Pugs project, a joint effort from the Haskell and Perl communities to implement the Perl 6 language; Tang also made contributions to internationalization and localization efforts for several Free Software programs, including SVK (a version-control software written in Perl for which Tang also wrote a large portion of the code), Request Tracker, and Slash, created Ethercalc, building on Dan Bricklin's work on WikiCalc and their work together on SocialCalc, as well as heading Traditional Chinese translation efforts for various open source-related books.

On CPAN, Tang initiated over 100 Perl projects between June 2001 and July 2006, including the popular Perl Archive Toolkit (PAR), a cross-platform packaging and deployment tool for Perl 5. Tang is also responsible for setting up smoke test and digital signature systems for CPAN. In October 2005, Tang was a speaker at O'Reilly Media's European Open Source Convention in Amsterdam.

Political career
Tang became involved in politics during Taiwan's 2014 Sunflower Student Movement demonstrations, in which Tang volunteered to help the protesters occupying the Taiwanese parliament building broadcast their message. The prime minister invited Tang to build media literacy curricula for Taiwan's schools, which was implemented in late 2017. Following this work, Tang was appointed minister without portfolio for digital affairs in the Lin Chuan cabinet in August 2016, and took office as the digital minister on October 1, being placed in charge of helping government agencies communicate policy goals and managing information published by the government, both via digital means. At age 35, Tang was the youngest minister without portfolio in Taiwanese history and was given this role to bridge the gap between the older and younger generations.

As a conservative anarchist, Tang ultimately desires the abolition of Taiwan and all states, and justifies working for the state by the opportunity it affords to promote worthwhile ends. Tang's conservatism stems from wanting to preserve free public spaces independent from the state, such as Internet properties, and wanting technological advances to be applied humanistically so that all, rather than a few, can reap its benefits, to the exclusion of others. Tang's department does not follow hierarchical or bureaucratic relationships. As of 2017, Tang's staff of 15 chose to work in the department. The group produces a weekly roadmap as collaborators, not orders. Tang was quoted as saying, "My existence is not to become a minister for a certain group, nor to broadcast government propaganda. Instead, it is to become a 'channel' to allow greater combinations of intelligence and strength to come together."

Tang's first initiative, the g0v project, involved swapping out the "o" for a zero in the government's "gov.tw" top-level domain to view more accessible and interactive versions of those governmental websites. The project was open source, in line with Tang's principles, and very popular, accessed millions of times each month. Another initiative, vTaiwan, uses social media paradigms for citizens to create digital petitions. Those with 5,000 signatures are brought to the premier and government ministries to be addressed. Changes implemented through this system include access to income tax software for non-Windows computers, and changes to cancer treatment regulations. The Taiwanese parliament complained that citizens had better access to influence regulation than they did as legislators. As of 2017, Tang was working on sharing economy software that would facilitate the free exchange of resources in abundance instead of the ride-sharing and peer hotel applications for which the technology is known.

As a general practice of "radical transparency", all of Tang's meetings are recorded, transcribed, and uploaded to a public website. Tang also publicly responds to questions sent through another website.

In 2022, Tang hosted the video podcast "Innovative Minds with Audrey Tang" in a collaboration with TaiwanPlus, an international streaming service. Guests on the program include Steve Chen, Vitalik Buterin, Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Sandra Oudkirk.

In January 2023 Tang became an e-resident of Lithuania which was announced during her first foreign visit as Digital Affairs minister in Vilnius, Lithuania.

title: Audrey Tang


text: User talk:69.155.216.24

title: User talk:69.155.216.24


text: User talk:210.213.144.17

title: User talk:210.213.144.17


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Comes

Comes (, : comites, ), often translated as count, was a Roman title or office.

The later medieval title of count evolved from the Roman one. Before becoming a word for various types of title or office, the word originally meant "companion", either individually or as a member of a collective denominated a "comitatus", especially the suite of a magnate, being in some instances sufficiently large and/or formal to justify specific denomination, e.g. a "cohors amicorum". "Comes" derives from "com-" ("with") and "ire" ("go").

Ancient Roman religion

Comes was a common epithet or title that was added to the name of a hero or god in order to denote relation with another god.

The coinage of Roman Emperor Constantine I declared him "comes" to Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") qua god.

Imperial Roman curial titles and offices styled comites
Historically more significant, "comes" became a secular title granted to trusted officials of the Imperial Curia ("Court"), present or former, and others as sign of Imperial confidence. It developed into a formal, dignitary title, derived from the "Companions" of Alexander the Great and rather equivalent to the Hellenistic title of "philos basilikos" or the paladin title of a knight of the Holy Roman Empire and a Papal Palatinus. Thus the title was retained when the titulary was appointed, often promoted, to an office away from court, frequently in the field or a provincial administration. Subsequently, it was thought logical to connect the title to specific offices that demanded an incumbent official of high dignity, and even to include it as part of the official title.

As the Imperial Roman Curia increased in number and assimilated all political power, the Roman Emperors instituted a casual practice of appointing faithful servants to offices. This had been done elsewhere, e. g. regarding the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard and the amici principis. As Imperial administration expanded, however, new offices became necessary and decentralization demanded modifications. The result was the institution of the rank of "comes".

The "comites", often translated as "counts", though they were neither feudal nor hereditary, became principal officials of the later Roman Empire. They held offices of all kinds from the army to the civil service, while retaining their direct access to the Emperor. Emperor Constantine I finalized them as the governmental echelon of "comites provinciarum" ("counts of the provinces"); the comites of the new echelon were assigned alongside the vicarii in the civil dioceses of the latter so that the comites became permanent fixtures of Imperial government. The comites were fully enumerated as early as the beginning of the AD 5th century in the Notitia Dignitatum, but as offices were later added, it is not historically exhaustive.

The following sections describe examples of the kinds of comites.

At court or in the Imperial domains
Several of the major departments of the Imperial Curia ("Court") and household had a principal official who was styled "comes" and assisted by an "officium" ("staff") very similar to that of a Roman governor. They included:
 * Comes dispositonum: a deputy to the very powerful magister officiorum (Master of Offices) responsible for organizing the Imperial calendar and preparing the correspondence for distribution to the proper offices for transcription.
 * Comes domesticorum: a vir illustris who was principal of the domestici, a corps of bodyguards of the Emperor who were stationed in the Imperial Palace. There were two of these comital commanders, the comes domesticorum equitum for the equestrian knights and the comes domesticorum peditum for the foot soldiers.
 * Comes privatae largitionis: the custodian of the privy purse, who answered and was subordinate to the comes rerum privatarum (see next title).
 * Comes rerum privatarum: a powerful Imperial official responsible for the private estates and holdings of the Emperor and his family ("res privata"). He maintained the properties and collected the rents, of which most were deposited in the Aerarium, i. e., the treasury of the public funds of the State, and some in the Fiscus, i. e., the treasury of privy funds of the Emperor that the comes privatae largitionis administered.
 * Comes sacrarum largitionum: a vir illustris who was custodian of the sacrae largitiones ("Sacred Largesses") of the Emperor and manager of the Imperial finances. He controlled all of the mints, each managed by a procurator; was the principal of numerous officials, including more procuratores, rationales, and praepositi, who collected senatorial taxes, custom duties, and some land taxes; was responsible for the yields of the mines; provided budgets for the civil service and armies; supplied all uniforms; and was competent for the minor offices of:
 * Comes auri: the official responsible for gold.
 * Comes sacrae vestis: the master of the wardrobe of the Emperor.
 * The 3 comites largitionum: the regional financial administrators of Italy, Africa, and Illyricum.
 * Comes commerciorum for Illyricum.
 * Comes metallorum per Illyricum: the official responsible for that region's gold mines.

Exceptionally, a gubernatorial position was styled "comes". For example, the comes Orientis, actually one of the vicarii, was an official who controlled the large and strategically important Imperial Diocese of the East by supervising the governors of this collection of provinces, but he was in turn supervised by the praefectus praetorio Orientis.

Further, the principal officials of some less important governmental departments who were under the authority of otherwise styled, high ranking, territorial officials could be titled "comes", e. g. under the praefectus urbi of Rome, himself a vir illustris, was a comes formarum, comes riparum et alvei Tiberis et Cloacarum ("Count of the Coast of the Tiber and the Canalisation"), and comes Portus ("Count of the Port").

The title "comes consistorianus" or "comes consistorialis" indicated specially appointed members to the consistorium, the council of the Roman emperor's closest advisors.

Comes rei militaris
The comes rei militaris held martial appointments, and commanded comitatenses. He ranked superior to a dux but inferior to the magister peditum or magister equitum; he functioned as the superior of a series of military stations, each commanded by a praepositus limitis ("border commander") and/or as a unit commander, e. g., of tribunes of cohorts, of alae (auxiliary equivalents), of numeri, and in the Eastern Empire even of legions. The Notitia Dignitatum of the early-5th century AD enumerates six such offices, being of the dignity of vir spectabilis, in the Western Empire: comes Italiae, comes Africae, comes Tingitaniae, comes Tractus Argentoratensis, comes Britanniarum and comes Litoris Saxonici; as well as two in the Eastern Empire: comes (limitis) Aegypti and comes Isauriae.
 * Comes Africae: official responsible for the defense of Roman Africa.
 * Comes tractus Argentoratensis: official responsible for the defense of part of Gallia.
 * Comes Avernorum: official responsible for the defense of the other part of Gallia.
 * Comes Britanniarum: official responsible for the defense of Britannia. This office presumably expired c. 410 AD, when the last Roman troops left that province.
 * Comes Litoris Saxonici per Britanniam: official responsible for the defense of the Saxon shore of Britannia.
 * Comes Hispaniarum: official responsible for the defense of Hispania.

As the number of comites increased, that dignity became devalued. This resulted in the introduction of classes of comites, denominated and ranked the first, second, and third "ordines".

Comites dominorum nostrorum
The comites dominorum nostrorum (plural of comes dominorum nostrorum; lit. 'Companions of Our Lords [Emperors]') were a mounted Imperial bodyguard during the tetrarchy of Emperor Diocletian in circa 300 AD.

Gothic Comites
The Goths that ruled Spain and Italy followed the Roman tradition of granting the title of "comes" to the various principals of the departments of their royal households, including but not limited to the:
 * Comes Cubiculariorum: Count in charge of the chamberlains (L. cubicularii).
 * Comes Scanciorum: the Count who commanded the cup bearers.
 * Comes Stabulorum: the Count who commanded the equerries and stables.
 * Comes Notariorum: the Count who commanded the chancery, i. e., the writing office.
 * Comes Thesaurorum: the Count who commanded the officials of the treasury.

Frankish Gaugraf
The Frankish kings of the Merovingian dynasty retained much of Roman administration, including the office and title of "comes", the original meaning of which they preserved, i. e., a companion of the king and a royal servant of high dignity. Under the early Frankish kings some comites did not have definite functions: they were merely attached to the person of the King and executed his orders. Others filled the highest offices, e. g. the Comes Palatii and Comes Stabuli (from which the contemporary title of "constable" derives).

Yet other comites served as regional officials. For administrative purposes, the Merovingian kingdoms were still divided into small Roman districts denominated "pagi" (hence the French "pays"), or similarly sized new creations "Gaue". These were smaller than the old Roman civitates ("cities", or polities) which became the basis of the new medieval bishoprics. In Carolingian times, the governor of a pagus was a Comes, corresponding to the German Graf. The King appointed the comites to serve at his pleasure. The modern German-derived term sometimes for a count who governed a whole gau is "Gaugraf", and a gau containing several counties is sometimes called a "Grossgau".

The essential competences of the comes were comprehensive in his pagus: martial, judicial, and executive; and in documents he is often described as the "agens publicus" ("public agent") of the King or "judex publicus/fiscalis" ("royal judge"). He was at once public prosecutor and judge, and was responsible for the execution of the sentences as well. As the delegate of the executive power, he had the right to exercise the "bannis regis" ("royal ban"), which gave him the right to command his military in the name of the King and to act as necessary to preserve the peace. As the King's representative, he exercised the royal right of protection ("mundium regis") of churches, widows, orphans, and the like. He enjoyed a triple "wergeld", but had no definite salary, being remunerated by receipt of specific revenues, which system contained the germs of discord, on account of the confusion of his public and private obligations.

According to philologists, the Anglo-Saxon word "gerefa", denoting "illustrious chief", however, is not connected to the German "Graf", which originally meant "servant"; compare the etymologies of the words "knight" and "valet". It is the more curious that the "gerefa" should end as a subservient reeve while the "graf" became a noble count.

Feudalism
In the feudal tradition, Latin was, especially in law, the official language, and therefore the rendering in Latin was equal in importance to the vernacular title. Thus, "comes" has been used as the Latin equivalent, or part of it, of all titles of comital office, whether containing "count" or some other word etymologically derived from "comes" or "graf". Similarly, it is part of the rendering, not always exclusive, of derived inferior titles containing such words, notably "vicecomes" for "viscount" and "burgicomes" and "burgravio" for "burgrave".

title: Comes


text:
Sampson v. Channell

Sampson v. Channell, 110 F.2d 754 (1st Cir. 1940), was a United States Court of Appeals decision interpreting the application of the Erie doctrine (derived from Erie v. Tompkins) where diversity jurisdiction is invoked in a choice of law situation, where a court in one state may be called upon to apply the laws of another state.

The Appellate court concluded that the federal district court must act as if it were a state court of the state in question, so long as the application of the state's substantive law might change the outcome of the case. This led to the anomaly that the federal courts must treat certain things (such as burdens of proof and statutes of limitations) as substantive law, even if the state treats these same things as merely procedural, as a justification for using their own law instead of the law of another state.

Facts
The plaintiff husband and wife were hit by a car in Maine; the driver of the other car was killed. The plaintiffs sued the estate of the dead driver in the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, naming the executor of the dead driver's estate as the defendant and invoking the court's diversity jurisdiction. The District court applied general principles of conflicts of law, determining that Maine law should control the case because that is where the accident happened. Under Maine law, the plaintiffs had the burden of proof to show that they were not contributorily negligent; had the court applied Massachusetts law, the defendant would have had the burden of showing plaintiff's contributorily negligence. The plaintiff appealed, contending that the Massachusetts Federal District Court should have applied the law of Massachusetts.

Issue

 * 1)  Should the Fed. Dist. Court have used federal rules of procedure, or the rule of the state?
 * 2)  If the rule of the state applies, which state is it?

Result
The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit wrote that the policy of the Erie doctrine is not to allow the choice of forum be outcome determinative, stating that "it is unfair and unseemly to have the outcome of litigation substantially affected by the fortuitous existence of diversity of citizenship." Therefore, if applying the law of the state would change the outcome as it might in a burden-of-proof situation where one of the parties is dead, then the Federal Court will treat it as substantive, and apply the law of the state. The question remained as to which state's law would apply.

To determine the solution to this controversy, the Appellate Court asks and answers three questions: Answer: no, because Massachusetts courts have already held the burden of proof to be merely procedural, and those are decided by the law of the forum. Answer: no, because nothing in the Constitution requires Massachusetts to follow the same conflicts of law principles as any other state (especially since the Massachusetts law was statutory). Answer: no, because Federal District Courts are tied to the law of the state they are in, not free to choose the law of the state they prefer. Besides, then the Fed. Court would have treat the burden-of-proof law of Massachusetts as procedural in order to ignore it, but at the same time would have to treat the burden-of-proof law of Maine as substantive in order to apply it, which would be inconsistent.
 * 1)  If the case had been brought in Massachusetts state court, would Massachusetts have brought in the Maine burden of proof?
 * 1)  Would the U.S. Supreme Court have any reason to reverse Massachusetts on such a decision?
 * 1)  Does the invocation of diversity of citizenship change any of this?

Therefore, the judgment was reversed and remanded, with an instruction to the district court to apply the Massachusetts burden of proof.

title: Sampson v. Channell


text:
Talk:Queen Alexandra

as per Wiki naming convention re former royal spouses; could also be Alexandra of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksborg; I've added this move request to start a discussion, DO NOT DELETE Mowens35 20:34, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * It was at Alexandra of Denmark before, it should be moved back to this Astrotrain 17:51, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
 * I have tried moving it, to no avail. It conflicts with "Princess Alexandra, Countess of Fredericksborg" for some reason. Any idea how to fix this? Mowens35 18:44, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The page belongs at Alexandra of Denmark and no where else. It is standard naming policy here and everywhere to refer to a royal spouse by returning to their pre-marital name, eg Catherine of Aragon, Mary of Teck. etc. In the case of princesses, that means where she was a princess of, but the princess title is not used. (How many history books have you seen with Princess Catherine of Aragon? . So she would be Alexandra of Denmark, not Princess Alexandra of Denmark, and sure as hell not Alexandra of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksborg. Personal names are not used in royal pages unless (a) it is a spouse returning to a pre-marital name, and (b) they were a commoner with no title to return to. She would only be Alexandra of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksborg if she had no title (as with Lady Diana Spencer, but in Diana's case, as she is a contemporary figure it has been suggested that she be left temporarily at Diana, Princess of Wales as she is still known by that, before eventually being used to Lady Diana Spencer in a couple of years. In strict terms, she should already be at LDS). But past royal spouses are never ever supposed to be at Queen  because as there is no ordinal confusion would reign. Would Queen Mary be Queen Mary (wife of George V) or Queen Mary (wife of James II). Would Queen Elizabeth be refer to the wife of George VI or the wide of Henry VII, etc? So to avoid this, history books and wikipedia move all past queens back to the maiden title or if none, maiden name.

What you have done now is create two talk pages linked to the same page, which is now back where it belongs at Alexandra of Denmark. So now someone is going to have to merge both into a talk page at Alexandra of Denmark. Please find someone to do it and don't move former queens like this again. (And if you have moved any, move them back to where they should be). The only other way to pull the pages together would be to cut and paste and that should be avoided. Fear ÉIREANN 20:59, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The oldest son of Alix and Bertie was called 'Albert Victor', not 'Albert Edward', which was Bertie's name. (I don't know how he got the nickname 'Eddy' I don't know. Maybe Edward was a subsequent name, but history records him as Albert Victor. Source: Harold Nicolson, King George V  - family tree at the back.

Alix's suicide attempt, and the fashion craze started by the high 'choker' collars, was reported in newspaper coverage on royal suicide attempts that followed claims about Diana, Princess of Wales's supposed suicide attempt. It featured in a number of Irish, British and continental papers, as well as in magazines. JTD 01:11 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)

 * Would the British Royal Family settle for a piddling two names? I think not ;). Edward was indeed a subsequent name: Albert Victor Christian Edward, Duke of Clarence.  I had never heard the choker bit, very interesting...and rather an unusual suicide method. -- Someone else 01:15 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)

 * Thanx. I didn't have his full name. I presumed Eddy was in there somewhere but he was formally known simply as Albert Victor just as the Duke of Windsor was known as 'Prince Edward' even though his family called him David.

 * Apparently Alix tried to cut her own throat. When it was a genuine suicide attempt, or something akin to one of Diana's melodramatic 'suicide' attempts (one of which apparently used a knife that was so blunt (and which she knew was so blunt) that it wouldn't cut melted butter!) Alix does come across as a very nice, genuine woman. But people who knew of the scar found it bizarre that millions of women in Britain, Ireland and even America began wearing Choker Collars (often made of lace), having absolutely no idea that Alix wasn't making a fashion choice but was trying to conceal a major scar. Indeed, quite apart from the suicide link, she and Diana were quite alike; strikingly beautiful women in marriages that were none too solid, with difficult relationships with courtiers, married to husbands who if they inherited the throne at all, would only inherit it in old age.

One can only hope that Prince William isn't a modern equivalent of poor Prince Eddy, who was mentally deficient (to put it mildly); others called him at the time mentally retarded'. And the poor lad did have a habit of stumbling quite innocently into 'scandals'; from supposedly being 'Jack the Ripper' (a bit difficult given that for one of the murders, he was up in Balmoral, in full view of Queen Victoria, the German Kaiser, the Prime Minister and senior ministers at dinner. (Even in the days of Concorde, he'd have difficulty getting down to London, murder a prostitute, and then get back to Balmoral in time for dessert! )The of course, there was the rumour that he was caught up in the Cleveland St. gay brothel scandal. I think Britain's monarchy had a lucky escape when he died and the throne went to his younger brother, who as George V was one of Britain's finest ever monarchs. JTD 03:12 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Alexandra of Denmark which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 03:46, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Queen Alexandra


text:
Guitar World

Guitar World is a monthly music magazine for guitarists – and fans of guitar-based music and trends – that has been published since July 1980. Guitar World, the best-selling guitar magazine in the United States, contains original artist interviews and profiles, plus lessons/columns (with tablature and associated audio files or videos), gear reviews, news and exclusive tablature (for guitar and bass) of three songs per issue. The magazine is published 13 times per year (12 monthly issues and a holiday issue) by Future plc. Damian Fanelli has been Guitar World's Editor-in-Chief since June 2018.

History
Stanley Harris, a New York magazine publisher, launched Guitar World magazine in July 1980. The magazine's debut issue featured bluesman Johnny Winter on the cover and included pieces on the Allman Brothers Band, George Thorogood and pedal steel guitars. As former Editor-in-Chief Brad Tolinski wrote in the magazine's 40th-anniversary issue, "It was a decent start, but the design and editorial content was still a bit lackluster. If you compared it to an amp, GW's first few issues were a sturdy 40-watt tweed combo, when what Harris really wanted was a row of 100-watt Marshalls."

Dennis Page, an advertising rep enlisted to handle the business end of the new magazine, hired a new Editor-in-Chief, Noe Goldwasser [aka Noe Gold]; Gold had his ear to the metal underground, printing the first of many cover stories with Eddie Van Halen. He edited several landmark issues in the magazine's first decade, including GW's fifth anniversary issue in 1985, which featured a cover-to-cover celebration of Jimi Hendrix; and a July 1986 tribute to Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, featuring a 15-page interview with the reclusive legend, along with early note-for-note transcriptions of Page solos to Stairway to Heaven and Rock and Roll.

When Gold left the magazine in 1988, he was replaced by Editor-in-Chief Joe Bosso and Executive Editor Matt Resnicoff. Due to their divergent tastes in music (Bosso preferred covering rock 'n' roll artists while Resnicoff was a jazz-fusion devotee), the magazine suffered from a split-personality approach to its coverage. As publisher Page said, "For a time the magazine lost its way. We started including a lot of jazz, which our readers didn't care about. I knew the key was for us to get younger, not older."

That changed in 1989, when Tolinski was asked to step into the magazine's lead role. "One glance at the May and June 1989 issues sums up the story," Tolinski wrote in 2020. "On one cover, a rather nervous-looking Allan Holdsworth hides timidly behind his Steinberger guitar, and on the next, Zakk Wylde explodes with pure animal fury while the headline screams SPECIAL REPORT! THE YOUNG GUNS OF METAL. GW went from black and white to full-on Technicolor."

After the June issue, GW became a straight-up rock 'n' roll magazine, becoming the publication Stanley Harris and Dennis Page dreamed of – a guitar magazine for "rockers with big hair, tight jeans and pointy guitars." And although rock, hard rock and heavy metal are still covered GW's pages, country guitarists, roots rockers, blues masters and shredders of all stripes have graced its pages, not to mention its cover.

Tolinski remained with the magazine until April 2015, when he was replaced by Jeff Kitts, who had been on GW's editorial staff since the early 1990s. Kitts was replaced by Damian Fanelli, who has been GW's editor-in-chief since June 2018; Fanelli had been with the magazine since 2011, originally as its online managing editor, later becoming its managing editor.

In July 2015, a photo of Guitar World annual "Gear Guide" featuring Deerhoof's Satomi Matsuzaki in a bikini placed next to a copy of She Shreds, a magazine dedicated to female and non-binary guitarists, went viral on the internet. Following criticism from the magazine and its readers, Guitar World publisher, New Bay Media, announced in April 2016 that it would stop using women in bikinis on the covers of their annual "Gear Guides". This practice was further called out by St. Vincent (Annie Clark), who appeared on the cover of the magazine's January 2017 issue in a bikini t-shirt. Clark was the first woman to appear on the cover since Joan Jett in May 2015.

Publishing history and sister magazines
Guitar World's debut issue was only 82 pages, had a very small staff and budget and wasn't even on a monthly schedule for about the first 12 years of publication. By 1984, GW began to multiply – spinoffs and offshoots became a large part of its focus as ownership looked to expand its reach into other markets and demographics. That year saw the publication of Guitar Heroes, a one-shot guide to more than 100 of the greatest guitar players of all time. In early 1992, the idea was revived as the semiannual Guitar World Legends, but with one major change: each issue was conceived as a tribute to an artist or genre, and included past GW interviews, lessons, equipment guides, rare photos and more.

GW's first official sister publication was Guitar School, which debuted in 1989 and foundered in 1997 shortly after its name was changed to Maximum Guitar. In the summer of 1993 GW branched out with Country Guitar, which morphed into Guitar World Acoustic and lasted until 2007. Mid-2003 saw GW venturing into the bass market with the premiere of Guitar World's Bass Guitar, which eventually ceased operation with its Pete Wentz-fronted June 2007 issue.

Second to Guitar World was the Guitar One magazine which was founded in 1998. The second best-selling US guitar magazine which was owned by Cherry Lane Magazines, was sold as part of the company's desire to scale down its magazine roster. Both of the magazines were purchased by Future Network in 2003. That year the circulation for Guitar World was 180,000, and for Guitar One was 140,000. The last publication for Guitar One was in 2007. Then what was left was taken up by Guitar World.

In the summer of 2009, GW's editorial staff launched Guitar Aficionado, a high-end publication designed for players passionate about the finer things associated with the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, including vintage and collectible axes, designer watches and fashion, exotic motorcycles, fine foods and spirits and more. By 2017, Guitar Aficionado had run its course.

Revolver, one of the leading hard rock and metal publications still in existence, was conceived as GW's sister publication in 1999. When it hit newsstands in the spring of 2000, Revolver's debut issue contained a unique mix of content, including an oral history of the Doors, a behind-the-scenes look at the Japanese pop scene and members of Slipknot wearing fashionable men's suits. But perhaps the world wasn't quite ready for such an eclectic combo: after only a few issues, Revolver was retooled and relaunched into the magazine metal fans know today.

While each of these magazines has either been killed off or – in the case of Revolver – sold to another company, GW is still part of a large family. As a member of Future plc, it calls Guitar Techniques, Total Guitar, Guitarist, Guitar Player and Bass Player its sister publications.

GW was published by Harris Publications from 1980 to 2003 and by Future US from 2003 to 2012. NewBay Media took over from 2012 to 2018, until Future plc re-acquired the magazine in April 2018.

Key editorial personnel
Source:

 * Editor-in-Chief – Damian Fanelli
 * Senior Music Editor – Jimmy Brown
 * Tech Editor – Paul Riario
 * Associate Editors – Andy Aledort, Chris Gill
 * Art Director – Mixie von Bormann

GuitarWorld.com
GuitarWorld.com was first launched in 1994 as the online counterpart to Guitar World magazine. It is run by a separate team to the print publication and posts up-to-the-minute guitar news, features, interviews, lessons, reviews and buyer's guides, as well as select content from the magazine. The site reaches 3.3m users per month. Since 2020, it has become the online home of other Future guitar brands, including UK titles Guitarist, Total Guitar, Guitar Techniques and US title Bass Player, all of which were formerly hosted on GuitarWorld.com sister site MusicRadar. Australian Guitar is also part of the GuitarWorld.com portfolio of brands.

During Guitar World's NewBay Media era, the site was edited by Damian Fanelli, who is now the print magazine's Editor-in-Chief. Since 2019, GuitarWorld.com's Editor-in-Chief is former MusicRadar Guitars Editor Michael Astley-Brown.

Personnel
Source:

 * Editor-in-Chief – Michael Astley-Brown
 * Associate Editor – Jackson Maxwell
 * Staff Writers – Sam Roche, Matt Owen

title: Guitar World


text:
Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge

The Diocese of Baton Rouge (Latin Dioecesis Rubribaculensis; French Diocèse de Bâton-Rouge; Spanish: Diócesis de Baton Rouge), is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese in the Florida Parishes region of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is a suffragan in the ecclesiastical province of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of New Orleans. The current bishop is Michael Duca.

1700 to 1961
The present-day Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge began with the work of French missionaries among the Native American peoples of the area. The Jesuit priest Pierre Charlevoix celebrated the first mass in the Baton Rouge area in 1722. The first Catholic churches in the region were:

 * St. Francis Chapel in Pointe Coupée in 1738
 * St. James in 1767
 * St. Gabriel in 1769. The oldest church in the diocese that still stands in its original form is St. Gabriel Church
 * Donaldsonville in 1772
 * Baton Rouge in 1792
 * Plattenville in 1793

In 1793, Pope Leo XIII erected the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas. It was renamed as the Roman Catholic Diocese of New Orleans in 1826 and elevated to a metropolitan archdiocese in 1850. The Baton Rouge area would remain part of the archdiocese for the next 110 years

1961 to 1974
On July 22, 1961, Pope John XXIII erected the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge, taking its territory from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans. He named Auxiliary Bishop Robert E. Tracy of the Diocese of Lafayette in Louisiana as the first bishop of Baton Rouge. Tracy designated St. Joseph Church as the cathedral church of the new diocese. When he took office, the new diocese had a Roman Catholic population 164,476 out of a total population of 464,904, as reported in the 1960 U.S. census.

Tracy established a consultative process as an integral part of the diocesan administration, and encouraged greater participation by the laity in governing the diocese. He also oversaw the construction of the Catholic Life Center and the renovation of St. Joseph Cathedral. In 1967, Tracy became the first American bishop to publish a financial statement for his diocese. In 1972, he established a committee for the regulation of allowing remarried Catholics to receive the sacraments, saying, "The Church has a pastoral responsibility of healing and forgiveness".

1974 to 1983
After Tracy retired in 1974, Pope Paul VI named Joseph V. Sullivan of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-Saint Joseph as the second bishop of Baton Rouge. In February 1979, he refused to allow theologian Charles Curran, whom Sullivan denounced as "heretical" and "not in accord with Catholic teaching", to speak at the Catholic Campus Ministry at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. After he removed the Claretian Fathers from the chaplaincy at Louisiana State University in March 1979, 51 priests filed a list of grievances with the Holy See.

In February 1981, Sullivan issued a pastoral letter in which he declared that ministries to divorced and remarried Catholics "may not witness, explicitly or implicitly, that the living Church condones the marital lifestyle of those living in an invalid marriage." He also promoted Catholic education, establishing elementary schools and planning for a new high school. Sullivan died in 1982.

1983 to 2018
In 1983, Pope John Paul II named Auxiliary Bishop Stanley Joseph Ott of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans as the third bishop of Baton Rouge. During his nine-year tenure, he encouraged the increased participation of the laity in diocesan affairs, and promoted the ecumenical movement by engaging with leaders of other religions. He also oversaw a major reorganization of the Presbyteral Council and other diocesan structures.

After Ott died in 1992, John Paul II named Auxiliary Bishop Alfred C. Hughes of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston in 1993 as the next bishop of Baton Rouge. The pope in 2001 appointed Hughes as coadjutor archbishop of New Orleans and named Auxiliary Bishop Robert Muench of New Orleans as Hughes' successor in Baton Rouge. Muench retired in 2018.

The current bishop of Baton Rouge is Michael Duca, formerly bishop of the Diocese of Shreveport. He was named bishop by Pope Francis in 2018.

Sex abuse controversies
The diocese was sued in January 2003 by Patrick Myers, who claimed that he was sexually abused by Reverend Christopher Springer from 1978 to 1982 when Myers was an altar server. The diocese removed Springer from ministry in 1985 and the Vatican laicized him in 1990. By July 2004, five more male former altar servers had sued the diocese regarding abuse by Springer, claiming that diocese attempted to hide Springer's alleged crimes. The diocese settled the lawsuits with the plaintiffs in December 2005.

In November 2004, the diocese settled a sexual abuse lawsuit brought by a Baton Rouge man. The plaintiff claimed that Bishop Sullivan had abused him when he was 17 years old in 1975. Bishop Muench authorized a settlement with the plaintiff, calling the accusations credible. He promised to rename the Bishop Sullivan High School in Baton Rouge before the next school term. In October 2009, the diocese paid $225,000 to settle a lawsuit in which a Houston, Texas, man claimed he was sexually abused by Sullivan as a seminarian between 1978 and 1982.

In 2009, Rebecca Mayeux and her parents sued the diocese and one of its priests, Jeff Bayhi. In 2008, the 14-year-old Mayeux had gone to confession with Bayhi and told him that she has been sexually abused by George Charlet Jr., a parish member. In the court filing, Mayeux's lawyers said that Bayhi had failed his legal responsibility to report the abuse to law enforcement. The diocese said that it was legally protected from revealing the contents of a confession in court. The Louisiana Supreme Court had previously ruled that the Catholic Seal of Confession was legally protected In 2016, a judge ruled that Bayli was not legally obligated to report anything said during confession.

In January 2019, the diocese released the names of 37 former clergy who had been accused of committing acts of sexual abuse while serving the diocese. The diocese added four more names to the list in February 2019, two more names in July 2019, two more names in January 2020, and another name in July 2020, bringing the current total to 46.

Statistics
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge includes the civil parishes of Ascension, Assumption, East Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, Iberville, Livingston, Pointe Coupee, Tangipahoa, St. Helena, St. James, West Baton Rouge and West Feliciana. It has a total area of about 5405 sqmi.

The diocese as of 2014 consisted of 64 diocesan parishes, two ethnic apostolates, and two university chaplaincies served by a total of 106 priests (50 active and 21 retired diocesan priests, 24 active and six retired religious priests, and five priests of other jurisdictions), 70 permanent deacons, three transitional deacons, 16 lay male religious (brothers), 90 female religious (nuns and sisters), and 17 seminarians.

Diocesan bishops

 * 1) Robert Emmet Tracy (1961-1974)
 * 2) Joseph Vincent Sullivan (1974-1982)
 * 3) Stanley Joseph Ott (1983-1992)
 * 4) Alfred Clifton Hughes (1993-2001), appointed Archbishop of New Orleans
 * 5) Robert William Muench (2002-2018)
 * 6) Michael Gerard Duca (2018–present)

Other diocesan priests who became bishops

 * William Donald Borders, appointed Bishop of Orlando in 1968 and later Archbishop of Baltimore
 * Shelton Fabre, appointed Auxiliary Bishop of New Orleans in 2006 and later Bishop of Houma-Thibodaux. He has been the Archbishop of Louisville since 2022.

High schools

 * Ascension Catholic Diocesan High School – Donaldsonville
 * Catholic High School – Baton Rouge
 * Catholic High School of Pointe Coupee – New Roads
 * Saint Thomas Aquinas Diocesan Regional High School – Tangipahoa Parish
 * St. John the Evangelist Interparochial High School – Plaquemine
 * St. Joseph's Academy – Baton Rouge
 * St. Michael the Archangel Diocesan Regional High School – Shenandoah, East Baton Rouge Parish

Ecclesiastical Province of New Orleans

 * See: Province of New Orleans

title: Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge


text:
User talk:Zeppelin4Life

Welcome to the Wikipedia
Welcome, newcomer!

Here are some useful tips to ease you into the Wikipedia experience:

 * First, take a look at the Wikipedia Tutorial, and perhaps dabble a bit in the test area.
 * When you have some free time, take a look at the Manual of Style and Policies and Guidelines. They can come in very handy!
 * Learn about some of the Wikipedia landmarks by trying our Wikipedia scavenger hunt!
 * Remember to use a neutral point of view!
 * If you need any help, feel free to post a question at the Help Desk
 * Explore, be bold in editing pages, and, most importantly, have fun!

Also, here are some odds and ends that I find useful from time to time:

 * Policy Library
 * Utilities
 * Cite your sources
 * Verifiability
 * Wikiquette
 * Civility
 * Conflict resolution
 * Brilliant prose
 * Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense
 * Village pump
 * Boilerplate text

Feel free to ask me anything the links and talk pages don't answer. You can most easily reach me by posting on my talk page.

You can sign your name on any page by typing 4 tildes, likes this: ~~~~.

Best of luck, and have fun!

ClockworkSoul 02:03, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Trunked Radio Systems
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! We welcome and appreciate your contributions, such as Trunked Radio Systems, but we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from either web sites or printed material. Perhaps you would like to rewrite the article in your own words. For more information about Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, take a look at our Five Pillars. Happy editing! – ClockworkSoul 02:06, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Semi-automated template substitution

 * This page was modified to semi-automatically substitute templates using Pathoschild's template list. // Rory 0 96 02:32, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

The Venue (Lafayette, Indiana)
The article The Venue (Lafayette, Indiana) has been speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This was done because the article, which appeared to be about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content, did not indicate how or why the subject is notable, that is, why an article about that subject should be included in Wikipedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not indicate the notability of the subject may be deleted at any time. If you can indicate why the subject is really notable, you are free to re-create the article, making sure to cite any verifiable sources.

Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable, and for specific types of articles, you may want to check out our criteria for biographies, for web sites, for musicians, or for companies. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. NawlinWiki (talk) 04:00, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

File copyright problem with File:Davidlombardoguitar.jpg
Thank you for uploading File:Davidlombardoguitar.jpg. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the file. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

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Colonie, New York
Since I messed up on my edit summary of why I reverted your recent edit to Colonie, New York I thought I should come here and explain correctly why I did. Colonie does not occupy the entire northeastern corner of Albany County as there is also the city of Cohoes, New York, the town and village of Green Island, New York, and the city of Watervliet, New York. The inhabitants of those cities and village would be quite surprised to learn that they dont exist and/or that they are not in the northeastern corner of the county, especially Cohoes which is in fact THE most northeastern corner of said county.Camelbinky (talk) 23:49, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

your Les Paul picture
Dude! Your Les Paul picture got used in this article: http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/55011-report-piracy-not-to-blame-for-changes-in-profits-for-major-music-la

without giving you credit either. Oh well. NIRVANA2764 (talk) 00:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

File:Purduep.gif listed for deletion
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Purduep.gif, has been listed at Files for deletion. Please see the to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Corkythe  hornetfan  18:03, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Zeppelin4Life


text:
User talk:Maschnoque

Welcome to the Wikipedia
Welcome, newcomer!

Here are some useful tips to ease you into the Wikipedia experience:

 * First, take a look at the Wikipedia Tutorial, and perhaps dabble a bit in the test area.
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Best of luck, and have fun!

ClockworkSoul 02:03, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Image:24van426.jpg
Burgundavia (✈ take a flight?) 09:26, May 21, 2005 (UTC)

Nonsense
Hey, stop adding nonsense. You could get blocked for that. Adam Bishop 04:33, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

{{subst:image copyright|Image:Sunset at Causeway.jpg}

Image copyright problem with Image:Suntower.jpg
Thanks for uploading Image:Suntower.jpg. However, the image may soon be deleted unless we can determine the copyright holder and copyright status. The Wikimedia Foundation is very careful about the images included in Wikipedia because of copyright law (see Wikipedia's Copyright policy).

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title: User talk:Maschnoque