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Downloads

Downloads

:This article is about the computer terms. :Download is also an industrial band led by CEvin Key. :Download is also a British heavy metal festival. :Uploading is also a hypothetical transfer of a human mind into a computer.

Computer networking

Uploading and downloading are related terms used to describe the transfer of electronic data between two computers or similar devices. Their primary usage is as a verb: to upload is to send data from a local computer to some remote computer, such as a website, FTP server, or other device. To download is to receive data from a remote computer. In general use, the terms do not refer to the basic communication required for the operation of the software including connecting to an FTP server or requesting and receiving data displayed in a web browser. Instead, they are reserved for the specific and intentional act of transferring a file. By extension, the terms can be used as nouns. In this context, an upload is any file that has been uploaded, particularly if it is awaiting the recipient's attention. A download is any file that is offered for downloading or that has been downloaded. Similarly but less commonly used, the transfer of data from one remote computer to another is called sideloading.

Jargon

In corporate jargon, download can refer to any transfer of information, especially summarized information, analogous to a briefing.

Download (band)

Download is a band created by Dwayne Goettel of Skinny Puppy prior to his death. Goettel's legacy is now carried on by bandmate cEvin Key. Download's music has been described as industrial, featuring a blend of synthesizers and sampled instruments; the music is particularly centered on elements of percussion and rhythm. In addition to the regular band members cEvin Key and Phil Western, at various times the band has featured Genesis P. Orridge, Mark Spybey, Anthony Valcic, and Ken Marshall. Earlier releases frequently included vocal elements and lyrics, but later releases have tended to be strictly instrumental.

Discography

- Furnace (1995)
- Microscopic (1995)
- Charlie's Family (1995) (Limited to 2000 copies)
- The Eyes of Stanley Pain (1996)
- Sidewinder (1996)
- Charlie's Family (Reissue) (1997)
- III (1997)
- Effector (2000)
- III Steps Forward (2002) (Limited to 1000 copies)
- Inception (2002) (Limited to 1000 copies) Category:Industrial music groups Category:Canadian musical groups Category:1990s music groups Category:2000s music groups

Download Festival

The Download Festival is a three day rock/metal/punk festival held at the spiritual home of rock music in England - Donington Park - home between 1980 and 1996 of the Monsters of Rock Festival, and venue for 2002's Ozzfest. It takes place in early summer, and is owned and managed by the US media conglomerate Clear Channel (see also Clear Channel UK ). History

2003

The first Download Festival was held in 2003. The headliners were originally Iron Maiden and Limp Bizkit although Limp Bizkit pulled out and were replaced by second on the bill band Audioslave. Metallica attempted to step in as headliners, but were unable due to already being headliners at that years Reading and Leeds Festivals. Instead, they played an unannounced "secret slot" in the afternoon on the second stage; this has been attributed to a chance meeting of fan James Dodd with Lars Ulrich in Heathrow airport.

2004

The 2004 Festival was headlined by Metallica and Linkin Park and the number of stages was upped to three, playing host to 72 bands over the two days. The 2004 event also featured Iggy Pop and The Stooges and was noticeable for several last minute hitches. Firstly Soil got lost on the way and missed their mainstage appearance on the Saturday (though they joined Drowning Pool on the second day for Drowning Pool's "Bodies" and their own song "Halo".). Static-X missed their slot due to a bus breakdown. The Sunday was no better - Slayer arrived on time, but their equipment didn't, leading to a slot change from the middle of the afternoon on the main stage to a later slot (and longer set) on the second stage. The biggest news came from the headliners Metallica however, when Lars Ulrich was rushed to hospital. Taking to the stage an hour and a half late, James Hetfield explained the situation with Lars and the show began with Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo, Slipknot's Joey Jordison and Metallica's drum technician, Flemming Larsen taking over.

Download Scotland

In June 2004 a two day Download festival was held on Glasgow Green, several days before the Donington event. This shared many of the same bands including the headliners, Metallica and Linkin Park.

2005

Download 2005 was held again at Donington Park, on 10-12 June 2005. The official line-up included: Friday, 10 June:
- Main Stage:Feeder, Garbage, Dinosaur Jr, Megadeth, Biffy Clyro, JJ72
- Snickers Stage:Billy Idol, The Used, My Chemical Romance, The Bled Saturday, 11 June - Ozzfest Day:
- Main Stage:Black Sabbath, Velvet Revolver, HIM, Anthrax, Alter Bridge, Bowling For Soup
- Snickers Stage:In Flames, Chimaira, Lamb of God, Bullet For My Valentine, Meshuggah, Unearth, Every time I Die Sunday, 12 June:
- Main Stage:System of a Down, Slipknot, Slayer, Nightwish, Killswitch Engage, Papa Roach
- Snickers Stage:Motörhead, DKT/MC5, Lacuna Coil, Mastodon, Caliban, As I Lay Dying

2006

Download will return, June 9th-11th at Donington Park. Artists rumoured to be playing include Aerosmith, Bowling For Soup, Trivium and Opeth.

External link

- [http://www.downloadfestival.co.uk Download Festival] Category:British music festivals

Mind transfer

In transhumanism and science fiction, mind transfer (also referred to as mind uploading or mind downloading, depending on one's point of reference), or whole body emulation refers to the hypothetical transfer of a human mind, body, and environment to an artificial substrate. In the case where it is transferred into a computer, the situation would become a form of artificial intelligence, sometimes called an infomorph. In the case where it is transferred into an artificial body to which its consciousness is confined, it would become a robot, albeit one which might claim ordinary human rights, certainly if the consciousness within were feeling (or were doing a good job of simulating) as if it were the donor (see cyborg). However, even if uploading is theoretically possible, there is currently no technology capable of recording or describing mind states in the way imagined, and no one knows how much computational power or storage would be needed to simulate the activity of the mind inside a computer. Uploading, in this sense, is a common theme in science fiction. One of the earlier instances of this theme was in the Roger Zelazny novel Lord of Light. Those with a strongly mechanistic view of human intelligence (a la Marvin Minsky) or a strongly positive view of robot-human social integration, e.g. Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil have openly speculated about the possibilities and their desirability. The fiction of Greg Egan has explored many of the philosophical, ethical, legal, and identity aspects of mind transfer, as well as the financial and computing aspects (i.e. hardware, software, processing power) of maintaining "copies." In the computer (PC/Mac + Wine/Cedega) game Total Annihilation, a multi-millennia war rages between a society mandating mind transfer, and a rebellion against it. The idea of uploading human consciousness in this manner raises many philosophical questions which people may find interesting and disturbing, such as matters of individuality and the soul. Vitalists would say that uploading was a priori impossible. Uploading consciousness into bodies created by robotic means is a goal of some in the artificial intelligence community. In the uploading scenario, the physical human brain does not move from its original body into a new robotic shell; rather, the consciousness is assumed to be recorded and/or transferred to a new robotic brain, which generates responses indistinguishable from the original organic brain.

How might mind transfer be performed?

An extremely crude means of moving (if not exactly 'uploading') consciousness using current technology is the head transplant which has been done on primates. Another such crude means which some researchers think is feasible in the near term is the whole-body transplant which moves only the brain. Since it is not easy to tell whether a body contains its original brain, nor necessarily easy to tell whether a body has the head it was born with, some of the identity questions are identical for these methods and those based on robotics. However, these methods do not involve copying the mind nor moving it into a non-organic medium, such as an electronic computer. Accordingly, they are technically quite different, and subject to normal limits of organic bodies and brains. True mind uploading remains speculation; the technology to perform such a feat is not currently available, nor is it expected to be for several decades at least.

Serial sectioning

A likely method for mind transfer is serial sectioning, in which the brain tissue and perhaps other parts of the nervous system are frozen, sliced apart or ablated layer by layer, and scanned at high resolution, perhaps with a transmission electron microscope. The scans would then be recombined and uploaded to appropriate emulation hardware (i.e., an artificial brain). This would require MEMS but would not seem to require molecular nanotechnology. Simply reproducing the structures visible by electron microscopy, however, would not allow replication of the function of a brain, since the function of brain tissue is determined by molecular events, particularly at synapses, that cannot be revealed by electron microscopy.

Nanotechnology

A more advanced hypothetical technique that would require nanotechnology might involve infiltrating the intact brain with a network of cell-sized machines to "read" the structure and activity of the brain in situ, much like current-day electrode meshes but on a much finer and more sophisticated scale. This might even allow for the replacement of living neurons with artificial neurons one by one while the subject is still conscious, providing a smooth transition from an organic to synthetic brain - potentially significant for those who worry about the loss of personal continuity that other uploading processes may entail.

Brain imaging

It may also be possible to use advanced brain imaging technology to build a detailed three-dimensional model of the brain using non-invasive methods. This possibility, however, could run into physical limitations concerning the resolution that can be achieved. Very high-resolution brain imaging (down to the nanometer) is currently available, but it would require destroying the brain by means of a serial sectioning scan as described above.

Recreating

It has also been suggested (for example, in Greg Egan's "jewelhead" stories) that a detailed examination of the brain itself may not be required, that the brain could be treated as a black box instead and effectively duplicated "for all practical purposes" by merely duplicating how it responds to specific external stimuli. This leads into even deeper philosophical questions of what the "self" is.

Copying vs. moving

By some definitions, the copied consciousness would 'be the same person' as the donor of the consciousness. In that case, this new being -- the same person as the original -- could have all the rights of the consciousness donor, including the disposal of the old body. By other definitions, the two copies would immediately be considered different people and the issue of which copy 'inherits' what can be much more complicated. This problem is similar to that found when considering the possibility of teleportation, where in some proposed methods it is possible to copy (rather than only move) a mind. This is the classic philosophical issue of personal identity. Philosopher John Locke published "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" in 1689, in which he proposed the following criterion for personal identity: if you remember thinking something in the past, then you are the same person as he or she who did the thinking. Later philosophers raised various logical snarls, most of them caused by applying Boolean logic, which was the only logic available at the time. It has been [http://www.ibiblio.org/jstrout/uploading/personalidentity.html proposed] that modern fuzzy logic can solve those problems, showing that Locke's basic idea is sound if one treats personal identity as a continuous rather than discrete value. In that case, when a mind is copied -- whether during mind uploading, or afterwards, or by some other means -- the two copies are initially two instances of the very same person, but over time, they will gradually become different people to an increasing degree.

Ethical issues of mind uploading

There are many ethical issues concerning mind transfer. Viable mind transfer technology would challenge the ideas of body identity, human immortality, property rights, capitalism, human intelligence, an afterlife, and the Judeo-Christian view of man as created in God's image. These challenges often cannot be distinguished from those raised by all technologies that extend human technological control over human bodies, e.g. organ transplant. Perhaps the best way to explore such issues is to discover principles applicable to current bioethics problems, and question what would be permissible if they were applied consistently to a future technology. This points back to the role of science fiction in exploring such problems, as powerfully demonstrated in the 20th century by such works as Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Dune and Star Trek, each of which frame current ethical problems in a future environment where those have come to dominate the society.

Mind transfer in science fiction

Mind transfer is a theme in many works of science fiction, including:
- Mamoru Oshii / Masamune Shirow's Ghost in The ShellAnime/Manga - portrays a future world in which human beings aggressively mechanize, replacing body and mind with interfacing mechanical/computer/electrical parts, often to the point of complete mechanization/replacement of all original material. Its sequel, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence deals heavily with the philosophical ramifications of this problem.
- Roger MacBride Allen's The Modular Man portrays the interior experience of a personality(David Bailey)uploaded into a vacuum cleaner and his legal battle for recognition as a legal personality. See also Political ideas in science fiction.
- Michael Berlyn's The Integrated Man, where a human mind, or part of it(or even just a set of skills)can be encoded on a chip and inserted into a special socket at the base of the brain.
- The Simultaneous Man by Ralph Blum, where brainwashing and psychosurgery techniques are used to create a copy of the experiences and memories of one person in the body of another.
- Kiln People by David Brin, postulates a future where people can create clay duplicates of themselves with all their memories up to that time. The duplicates only last 24 hours, and the original can then choose whether or not to upload the ditto's memories back into himself afterward. Most people use dittos to do their work.
- Permutation City and Diaspora by Greg Egan, where "Copies" are made by computer simulation of scanned brain physiology. See also Egan's "jewelhead" stories, where the mind is transferred from the organic brain to a small, immortal backup computer at the base of the skull, the organic brain then being surgically removed.
- Similar to Egan's "jewelhead" stories, Battle Angel Alita, also known as Gunnm, has a major plot point, in which a closely guarded secret of the elite city of Tiphares/Zalem is that it's citizens, after being eugenically screened and rigorously tested in a maturity ritual, have their brains scanned, removed and replaced with chips. When revealed to a Tipharean/Zalem citizen, the internalized philosophical debate causes most citizens to go insane.
- William Gibson's Neuromancer, in which a hacking tool used by the main character is an artificial infomorph of a notorious cyber-criminal, Dixie Flatline. The infomorph only assists in exchange for the promise that he be deleted after the mission is complete.
- Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon and other Takeshi Kovacs books, where everyone has a “cortical stack” implanted at the base of their skull, soon after being born. The device then records all your memories and experiences in real-time. The stack can be "resleeved" in another body, be it a clone or otherwise, and/or backed up digitally at a remote location.
- Garth Nix's Shade's Children, in which Shade is an uploaded consciousness acting in loco parentis to teenagers to help save them from evil Overlords. Shade contemplates at times how human he is, especially as his personality degenerates during the story; and whether or not he should have a new human body.
- Charles Platt's The Silicon Man, where an FBI agent who has stumbled on a top-secret project called LifeScan is destructively uploaded against his will. Realistically describes the constraints of the process and machinery.
- Where is the travellers home? by a Russian author Aleksandr Mirer describes a variant of the theory - a world where the minds are of three types and the more subtle level of minds can be uploaded to a body without removing the other mind it possesses - it just overrides some of its functions.
- John Sladek's satirical The Muller-Fokker Effect, in which a human mind could be recorded on cassette tapes and then imprinted on a human body using tailored viruses.
- Red Dwarf, where a person's memories and personality can be recorded in just a few seconds and, upon their death, they can be recreated as a holographic simulation. Arnold Rimmer is an example of such a person.
- Tad Williams' Otherland quadrilogy, which focuses on the activities of a secret society whose nefarious goals are to create a virtual reality network where they will be uploaded and in which they will live as gods. Otherland contains a very hard SF approach to the topic, but balances the hard approach with fantastical adventures of the protagonists within the virtual reality network.
- Iain M. Banks's Culture novels make extensive reference to the transfer of mind-states.
- The computer game Independence War, in which the player is assisted by a recreation of CNV-301 Dreadnought's former captain, who is quite bitter about having been recreated without his consent.
- In the TV series Stargate SG-1, the Asgard cheat death by transferring their minds into new clone bodies. The mind of Thor, the high commander of the Asgard fleet, was for a time transferred into the computer of a Goa'uld spaceship. In other episodes, many of the main characters have had their minds transferred to computers, robots, and virtual reality, including one episode in which the primary characters temporarily switch bodies.
- The television series Battlestar Galactica (2003) features human-like androids which, upon the destruction of their physical bodies, transfer their conciousness into another identical body somewhere else in the universe.
- Anne McCaffrey's Ship series is about children born with severe physical handicaps whose healthy brains are placed into spaceships and other mechanical shells.
- In Carlos Atanes' FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions the Sisterhood of Metacontrol transfer Angeline's conciousness into the virtual world of the Réseau Céleste.
- Robert J. Sawyer's novel Mindscan deals with the issue of uploaded consciousness from the perspective of Jake Sullivan: both of them. The human Jake has a rare, life threatening disease and to extend his life he decides to upload his consciousness into a robotic body; however things don't go quite as planned.
- In The 6th Day movie, memories could be downloaded from the eyes, and uploaded to clones.

Mind transfer advocates

The Raelian cult believes that mind uploading is practiced by extra-terrestrial beings who will teach these skills to mankind. However, mind uploading is also advocated by a number of secular researchers in neuroscience and artificial intelligence, such as Marvin Minsky. In 1993, Joe Strout created a small web site called the Mind Uploading Home Page, and began advocating the idea in Cryonics circles and elsewhere on the net. That site has not been actively updated in recent years, but it has spawned other sites including MindUploading.org, run by Randal A. Koene, Ph.D., who also moderates a mailing list on the topic. These advocates see mind uploading as a medical procedure which could eventually save countless lives. Many Transhumanists look forward to the development and deployment of mind uploading technology before the end of the 21st century. The book "Beyond Humanity: CyberEvolution and Future Minds" by Gregory S. Paul & Earl D. Cox, is about the eventual (and, to the authors, almost inevitable) evolution of computers into sentient beings, but also deals with human mind transfer.

External links

- [http://www.ibiblio.org/jstrout/uploading/ Joe Strout's Mind Uploading Home Page]
- [http://minduploading.org MindUploading.org]
- [http://216.247.9.207/ny-best.htm "Treat Yourself to a New Body" BrainTrans, Inc. Company Website]
- [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=95210916 "The history, theory, and present status of brain transplantation."] - Medical paper Category:Transhumanism Category:Science fiction themes

Mind

The mind is the term most commonly used to describe the higher functions of the human brain, particularly those of which humans are subjectively conscious, such as personality, thought, reason, memory, intelligence and emotion. Although other species of animals share some of these mental capacities, the term is usually used only in relation to humans. It is also used in relation to postulated supernatural beings to which human-like qualities are ascribed, as in the expression "the mind of God."

Theories of the mind

There are many theories of what the mind is and how it works, dating back to Plato, Aristotle and other Ancient Greek philosophers. Pre-scientific theories, which were rooted in theology, concentrated on the relationship between the mind and the soul, the supposed supernatural or divine essence of the human person. Modern theories, based on a scientific understanding of the brain, see the mind as a phenomenon of psychology, and the term is often used more or less synonymously with consciousness. Another theory, Dianetics, which was developed in the late 1940s pays no attention to where the mind is located or even if it has a physical location. The question of which human attributes make up the mind is also much debated. Some argue that only the "higher" intellectual functions constitute mind: particularly reason and memory. In this view the emotions - love, hate, fear, joy - are more "primitive" or subjective in nature and should be seen as different in nature or origin to the mind. Others argue that the rational and the emotional sides of the human person cannot be separated, that they are of the same nature and origin, and that they should all be considered as part of the individual mind. In popular usage mind is frequently synonymous with thought: it is that private conversation with ourselves that we carry on "inside our heads" during every waking moment of our lives. Thus we "make up our minds," "change our minds" or are "of two minds" about something. One of the key attributes of the mind in this sense is that it is a private sphere. No-one else can read our thoughts or "know our mind." They can only know what we communicate (and this is true even under torture).

Nature of the mind

Both philosophers and psychologists remain divided about the nature of the mind. Some take what is known as the substantial view, and argue that the mind is a single entity, perhaps having its base in the brain but distinct from it and having an autonomous existence. This view ultimately derives from Plato, and was absorbed from him into Christian thought. In its most extreme form, the substantial view merges with the theological view that the mind is an entity wholly separate from the body, in fact a manifestation of the soul, which will survive the body's death and return to God, its creator. Others take what is known as the functional view, ultimately derived from Aristotle, which holds that the mind is a term of convenience for a variety of mental functions which have little in common except that humans are conscious of their existence. Functionalists tend to argue that the attributes which we collectively call the mind are closely related to the functions of the brain and can have no autonomous existence beyond the brain - nor can they survive its death. In this view mind is a subjective manifestation of consciousness: the human brain's ability to be aware of its own existence. The concept of the mind is therefore a means by which the conscious brain understands its own operations.

History of the philosophy of the mind

A leading exponent of the substantial view was George Berkeley, an 18th century Anglican bishop and philosopher. Berkeley argued that there is no such thing as matter and what humans see as the material world is nothing but an idea in God's mind, and that therefore the human mind is purely a manifestation of the soul or spirit or similar. This type of belief is also common in certain types of spiritual non-dualistic belief, but outside this field few philosophers take an extreme view today. However, the view that the human mind is of a nature or essence somehow different from, and higher than, the mere operations of the brain, continues to be widely held. Berkeley's views were attacked, and in the eyes of many philosophers demolished, by T.H. Huxley, a 19th century biologist and disciple of Charles Darwin, who agreed that the phenomena of the mind were of a unique order, but argued that they can only be explained in reference to events in the brain. Huxley drew on a tradition of materialist thought in British philosophy dating to Thomas Hobbes, who argued in the 17th century that mental events were ultimately physical in nature, although with the biological knowledge of his day he could not say what their physical basis was. Huxley blended Hobbes with Darwin to produce the modern materialist or functional view. Huxley's view was reinforced by the steady expansion of knowledge about the functions of the human brain. In the 19th century it was not possible to say with certainty how the brain carried out such functions as memory, emotion, perception and reason. This left the field open for substantialists to argue for an autonomous mind, or for a metaphysical theory of the mind. But each advance in the study of the brain during the 20th century made this harder, since it became more and more apparent that all the components of the mind have their origins in the functioning of the brain. Huxley's rationalism, however, was disturbed in the early 20th century by the ideas of Sigmund Freud, who developed a theory of the unconscious mind, and argued that those mental processes of which humans are subjectively aware are only a small part of their total mental activity. Freudianism was in a sense a revival of the substantial view of the mind in a secular guise. Although Freud did not deny that the mind was a function of the brain, he held the mind has, as it were, a mind of its own, of which we are not conscious, which we cannot control, and which can be accessed only though psychoanalysis (particularly the interpretation of dreams). Freud's theory of the unconscious, although impossible to prove empirically, has been widely accepted and has greatly influenced the popular understanding of the mind. More recently, Douglas Hofstadter's 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Gödel, Escher, Bach - an eternal Gold Braid", is a tour de force on the subject of mind, and how it might arise from the neurology of the brain. Amongst other biological and cybernetic phenomena, Hofstadter places tangled loops and recursion at the center of Self, Self-awareness, and perception of oneself, and thus at the heart of Mind and thinking. Likewise philosopher Ken Wilber posits that Mind is the interior dimension of the brain holon. That is, that mind is what a brain looks like internally, when it looks at itself.

Current research

The debate about the nature of the mind is relevant to the development of artificial intelligence. If the mind is indeed a thing separate from or higher than the functioning of the brain, then presumably it will not be possible for any machine, no matter how sophisticated, to duplicate it. If on the other hand the mind is no more than the aggregated functions of the brain, then it will be possible, at least in theory, to create a machine with a mind. The Mind/Brain/Behavior Interfaculty Initiative (MBB) at Harvard University aims to elucidate the structure, function, evolution, development, and pathology of the nervous system in relation to human behavior and mental life. It draws on the departments of psychology, neurobiology, neurology, molecular and cellular biology, radiology, psychiatry, organismic and evolutionary biology, history of science, and linguistics.

External links

- http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0503/feature1/index.html
- [http://mind.sourceforge.net/theory5.html theory of mind] for artificial intelligence. Category:Cognitive science Category:Psychology Category:Metaphysics simple:Mind

Website

Website.]] A website, web site or WWW site (often shortened to just site) is a collection of web pages, typically common to a particular domain name or sub-domain on the World Wide Web on the Internet. A web page is an HTML/XHTML document accessible generally via HTTP. All publicly accessible websites in existence comprise the World Wide Web. The pages of a website will be accessed from a common root URL called the homepage, and usually reside on the same physical server. The URLs of the pages organise them into a hierarchy, although the hyperlinks between them control how the reader perceives the overall structure and how the traffic flows between the different parts of the sites. Some websites require a subscription to access some or all of their content. Examples of subscription sites include many Internet pornography sites, parts of many news sites, gaming sites, message boards, Web-based e-mail services and sites providing real-time stock market data.

Overview

A website will may be the work of an individual, a business or other organization and is typically dedicated to some particular topic or purpose. Any website can contain a hyperlink to any other website, so the distinction between individual sites, as perceived by the user, may sometimes be blurred. Websites are written in, or dynamically converted to, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and are accessed using a software program called a web browser, also known as a HTTP client. Web pages can be viewed or otherwise accessed from a range of computer based and Internet enabled devices of various sizes, examples of which include desktop computers, laptop computers, PDAs and cell phones. A website is hosted on a computer system known as a web server, also called an HTTP Server, and these terms can also refer to the software that runs on these system and that retrieves and delivers the web pages in response to requests from the web site users. Apache is the most commonly used web server software (according to Netcraft statistics) and Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) is also commonly used. A static website, is one that has content that is not expected to change frequently and is manually maintained by some person or persons using some type of editor software. There are two broad categories of editor software used for this purpose which are
- Text editors such as Notepad, where the HTML is manipulated directly within the editor program
- WYSIWYG editors such as Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver, where the site is edited using a GUI interface and the underlying HTML is generated automatically by the editor software. A dynamic website is one that may have frequently changing information. When the web server receives a request for a given page, the page is automatically generated by the software in direct response to the page request; thus opening up many possibilities including for example: a site can display the current state of a dialogue between users, monitor a changing situation, or provide information in some way personalised to the requirements of the individual user. There are a large range of software systems, such as Active Server Pages (ASP), Java Server Pages (JSP) and the PHP programming language that are available to generate dynamic web systems and dynamic sites also often include content that is retrieved from one or more databases or by using XML-based technologies such as RSS. Static content may also be dynamically generated periodically or if certain conditions for regeneration occur (cached) to avoid the performance loss of initiating the dynamic engine on a per-user or per-connection basis. Plugins are available for browsers, which use them to show active content, such as Flash, Shockwave or applets written in Java. Dynamic HTML also provides for user interactivity and realtime element updating within Web pages (i.e., pages don't have to be loaded or reloaded to effect any changes), mainly using the DOM and JavaScript, support for which is built-in to most modern browsers.

Types of websites

There are many varieties of websites, each specialising in a particular type of content or use, and they may be arbitrarily classified in any number of ways. A few such classifications might include:
- Archive site: used to preserve valuable electronic content threatened with extinction. Two examples are: Internet Archive which since 1996 preserves billions of old (and new) Web pages, and Google Groups which in early 2005 was archiving over 845,000,000 messages posted to Usenet news/discussion groups.
- Blog (or weblog) site: site used to log online readings or to post online diaries; may include discussion forums.
- Business site: used for promoting a business or service.
- Commerce site or eCommerce site: for purchasing goods, such as Amazon.com.
- Community site: a site where persons with similar interests communicate with each other, usually by chat or message boards.
- Database site: a site whose main use is the search and display of a specific database's content such as the Internet Movie Database or the Political graveyard.
- Development site: a site whose purpose is to provide information and resources related to software development, Web design and the like.
- Directory site: a site that contains varied contents which are divided into categories and subcategories, such as Yahoo! directory, Google directory and Open Directory Project.
- Download site: strictly used for downloading electronic content, such as software, game demos or computer wallpaper.
- Game site: a site that is itself a game or "playground" where many people come to play, such as MSN Games, Pogo.com and the MMORPGs Planetarion and Kings of Chaos.
- Information site: contains content that is intended merely to inform visitors, but not necessarily for commercial purposes; such as: RateMyProfessors.com, Free Internet Lexicon and Encyclopedia.
- News site: similar to an information site, but dedicated to dispensing news and commentary.
- Pornography site: a site that shows pornographic images and videos.
- Search engine site: a site that provides general information and is intended as a gateway or lookup for other sites. A pure example is Google, and the most widely known extended type is Yahoo!.
- Shock site: includes images or other material that is intended to be offensive to most viewers.
- Vanity site (or "personal site"): run by an individual or a small group (such as a family) that contains information or any content that the individual wishes to include.
- Web portal site: a website that provides a starting point, a gateway, or portal, to other resources on the Internet or an intranet.
- Wiki site: a site which users collaboratively edit (such as Wikipedia). Some sites may be included in one or more of these categories. For example, a business website may promote the business's products, but may also host informative documents, such as white papers. There are also numerous sub-categories to the ones listed above. For example, a porn site is a specific type of eCommerce site or business site (that is, it is trying to sell memberships for access to its site). A fan site may be a vanity site on which the administrator is paying homage to a celebrity. Many business Websites have the appearance of brochures—that is, an advertisement that can be strolled around. Some websites act as vehicles for users to communicate with other people via webchat. Websites are constrained by architectural limits (e.g. the computing power dedicated to the Website). Very large websites, such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google and most other very large sites employ several servers and load balancing equipment, such as Cisco Content Services Switches

Mousetrapping

Mousetrapping is a technique employed by some "aggressive" commercial websites, especially ones that are pornographic in nature, which prevents the user from leaving the site, depending on Web browser settings. Typically, this form of trapping is employed by the use of Javascript code (or Dynamic HTML) that detects a user's attempt to either close the browser window or leave the Website to view another site. These attempts may easily fail if the user disabled javascript on their Web browser; however, disabling Javascript may also impact how well certain pages on the current site or other Websites load. Tools such as pop-up blockers can help in preventing this annoyance but by no means will solve the problem entirely. [http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/mousetrapping.html]

Prizes

The Webby Awards are a set of awards presented to the world's "best" Websites.

Spelling

As noted above, there are several different spellings for this term. Although "website" is commonly used (particularly by some newspapers and other media), Reuters, Microsoft, academia, and dictionaries such as Oxford, prefer to use the two-word, capitalised spelling "Web site". An alternate version of the two-word spelling is not capitalised. As with many newly created terms, it may take some time before a common spelling is finalised. (This controversy also applies to derivative terms such as "Web master"/"webmaster".) The Associated Press Stylebook, a guide to newspaper style, suggests "Web site" and "Web page". "WWW site" is rarely used.

External links

- [http://www.w3.org/ World Wide Web Consortium]
- [http://www.isoc.org/ The Internet Society (ISOC)]
- [http://www.icann.org/ Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers]
- [http://www.useit.com Useit.com Internet Usability]
- [http://www.cgisecurity.com/questions/securewebsite.shtml How do I secure my website?] CGISecurity.com - Website Security Portal
- ko:웹사이트 ja:ウェブサイト simple:Website

FTP server

The term FTP server can mean one of two things: # a computer responsible for serving any kind of files, via the File Transfer Protocol to FTP clients which can also be web browsers; # a software program that implements the FTP protocol and is working as a daemon serving any kind of files. Connections to FTP servers are made using FTP clients or certain web browsers that function as FTP clients. Some FTP servers also supports SSL connections.

Sideload

Sideload is a term used in internet culture, similar to "upload" and "download". It is the process of moving data between two web servers. Sideload is now becoming the popular term for getting music files from the internet to periphereal devices such as cell phones and pda. It can also mean getting music from your pc to your cell phone. For example, moving a music file from John's web server directly to Jane's web server is considered sideloading. While this process is technically downloading from one server onto another, the term sideload was created to avoid confusion related to the popular notion of download referring to a file coming from the internet onto someone's personal computer. The term "Sideload" has been in use since the 1950's and likely earlier in the scientific field. In a [http://www.nv.doe.gov/news&pubs/photos&films/0800000/hdt1-000.mpg movie file] on the Department of Energy's [http://www.nv.doe.gov Nevada Test Site Web Page] about the 1958 Operation Hardtack nuclear tests, the term "Sideload Computations" is used by the narrator in reference to comparing data between "measured" and "analytical" responses; i.e. determining efficiency between calculated and measured results.

Corporate

A corporation is a legal entity (distinct from a natural person) that often has similar rights in law to those of a natural person. Civil law systems may refer to corporations as "moral persons;" they may also go by the name "AS" (anonymous society) or something similar, depending on language (see below). In colloquial usage, "corporation" usually refers to a commercial entity set up in accordance with a governmental framework. Churches (mainly in US, but not so much in other countries, where Churches have a different status), interest groups (both can form as not-for-profit corporations or can exist as voluntary associations), cities and townships (often chartered as public corporations), among others, may also have historically lengthy corporate identities.

Legal status

The law typically views a corporation as a fictional person, a legal person, or a moral person (as opposed to a natural person); United States law recognises this as corporate personhood. Under such a doctrine (obviously a legal fiction), a corporation enjoys many of the rights and obligations of individual citizens, such as the ability to own property, sign binding contracts, pay taxes, have certain constitutional rights, and otherwise participate in society. (Note that corporations do not possess all the rights appertaining to individuals: in most jurisdictions, for example, a corporation cannot vote.) In common law countries, the classic statement of this principle is found in Lennard's Carrying Co Ltd v Asiatic Petroleum Co Ltd [1915], where Lord Haldane said: :"My Lords, a corporation is an abstraction. It has no mind of its own any more than it has a body of its own; its active and directing will must consequently be sought in the person of somebody who is really the directing mind and will of the corporation, the very ego and centre of the personality of the corporation." The most salient features of incorporation include: #Limited Liability. Unlike in a partnership, stockholders of a corporation hold no liability for the corporation's debts and obligations: see leading case in common law, Salomon v. Salomon & Co.. As a result their "limited" potential losses cannot exceed the amount which they paid for the stock. Not only does this allow corporations to engage in risky enterprises, but limited liability also forms the basis for trading in corporate stock. Without the limitation on the amount that an investor can lose, the time and effort required to determine whether the stock could wipe the investor out would render the stock market very illiquid (as one can observe in the very illiquid market for partnership interests). A lender can, however, require a personal guarantee on a loan to a corporation, thus introducing personal liability. #Perpetual Lifetime. The assets and structure of the corporation exist beyond the lifetime of any of its shareholders, officers or directors. This allows for stability of capital, which thus becomes available for investment in projects of a larger size and over a longer term than if the corporate assets remained subject to dissolution and distribution. This feature also had great importance in the medieval period, when land donated to the Church (a corporation) would not generate the feudal fees that a lord could claim upon a landholder's death. In this regard, see Statute of Mortmain. #Profit Maximization. In Anglo-American jurisdictions, business corporations are generally required to serve the best interests of the shareholders, a rule that courts have generally interpreted to mean the maximization of share value, and thus profits. Corporate directors are prohibited by corporate law from sacrificing profits to serve some other interest. Originally this included such areas as environmental protection, or the improvement of the welfare of the community. For example, when Henry Ford cut dividends and reduced car prices in order to increase the number of people who could afford to buy his cars, his brother-in-law, Mr. Dodge, a shareholder, sued him for having harmed profitability: Dodge v. Ford Motor Company, 170 N.W 688 (Mich.S.C. 1919). Mr. Dodge succeeded and went on to form his own car company with the proceeds of the suit. However, modern law by statutes and court decisions holds that a corporation does have an implied authority to make charitable contributions to society.

Ownership and control

Humans and other legal entities (such as trusts and other corporations) can hold shares. When no stockholders exist, a corporation may exist as a "non-stock corporation", a "membership corporation", or similar — this second type of corporation counts as a not-for-profit corporation. In either category, the corporation comprises a collective of individuals with a distinct legal status and with special privileges not vouchsafed to ordinary unincorporated businesses, to voluntary associations, or to groups of individuals. Typically, a board of directors governs a corporation on the stockholders' behalf. The board has a fiduciary duty to look after the interests of the corporation. The corporate officers such as the CEO, president, treasurer, and other titled officers are chosen by the board to manage the affairs of the corporation. Corporations can also be controlled (in part) by creditors such as banks. In return for lending money to the corporation, creditors can demand a control interest analogous to that of a shareholder, including one or more seats on the board of directors. Creditors are not said to "own" the corporation as shareholders do, but can outweigh the shareholders in practice, especially if the corporation is experiencing financial difficulties and cannot survive without credit. Shareholders in a corporation are said to have a "residual interest." Should the corporation end its existence, the shareholders are the last to receive its assets, following creditors and others with interests in the corporation. This can make investment in a corporation risky; however, the risk is outweighed by the corporation's limited liability, which ensures that the shareholder will only be liable for the amount they invested.

Formation

Historically, corporations were created by special charter of state governments. Today, corporations are usually registered with a state, and become regulated by the laws enacted by that state. Registration is the main prerequisite to the corporation's assumption of limited liability. As part of this registration, it must designate the principal address of the corporation (where to contact it in the event of legal process), and often an agent or other legal representative of the corporation. Generally, a corporation files articles of incorporation with the government, laying out the general nature of the corporation, the amount of stock it is authorized to issue, and the names and addresses of directors. Once the articles are approved, the corporation's directors meet to create bylaws that govern the internal functions of the corporation, such as meeting procedures and officer positions. The law of the state in which a corporation operates will regulate most of its internal activities, as well as its finances. If a corporation operates outside its home state, it is often required to register with other governments as a foreign corporation, and is almost always subject to laws of its host state pertaining to employment, crimes, contracts, civil actions, and the like.

Naming

Corporations generally have a distinct name. Historically, corporations were named after their membership: for instance, "The President and Fellows of Harvard College." Nowadays, corporations in most jurisdictions have a distinct name that does not need to make reference to their membership. In Canada, this possibility is taken to its logical extreme: many smaller Canadian corporations have no names at all, merely numbers (e.g., "Ontario 123-4567 Limited"). In most countries, corporate names include the term "Corporation", or an abbreviation that denotes the corporate status of the entity. See Types of corporations for a full list. These terms, known as words of limitation, obviously vary by jurisdiction and language. Their use puts all persons on constructive notice that they have to deal with an entity whose liability remains limited, in the sense that it does not reach back to the persons who constitute the entity; one can only collect from whatever assets the entity still controls at the time one obtains a judgment against it. Certain jurisdictions do not allow the use of the word "company" alone to denote corporate status, since the word "company" may refer to a partnership or to a sole proprietorship, or even, archaically, to a group of not necessarily related people (for example, those staying in a tavern).

Unresolved issues

The nature of the corporation continues to evolve, both through existing corporations pushing new ideas and structures, and governments regulating them in response to new situations. A current question is that of diffused responsibility: for example, if the corporation is found liable for a death, then how should the blame and punishment for this be allocated across the shareholders, directors, management and staff of the corporation? The present law diffuses this responsibility. One may think that the owners of the business - the shareholders - should be ultimately responsible for such circumstances, but the modern corporation may have many millions of small-scale shareholders who know nothing about its business activities. Worse still, traders - especially hedge funds - may rapidly turn over their partial ownership of a corporation many times a day. One suggestion is that the directors should be passed the burden of moral and legal responsibility as part of their job of representing the shareholders. This is currently an active area of debate.

Origins

Etymology

The word "corporation" derives from the Latin corpus (body), representing a "body of people"; that is, a group of people authorized to act as an individual (Oxford English Dictionary). The word universitas also used to refer to a group of people but now refers specifically to a group of scholars (see University). In the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, the term corporation was also used for the local government body in charge of a borough. This style was replaced in most cases with the term council in the United Kingdom in 1973, and in the Republic of Ireland in 2001. The sole exception is the Corporation of London which retains the title.

Pre-modern corporations

Corporations have been present in some forms as far back as Ancient Rome. Although devoid of some of the core characteristics by which corporations are known today, they nonetheless were enterprises, sanctioned by the state, with a form of shareholders who invested money for a specific purpose. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, the rise of Christianity and the influx of Germanic tribes, the Roman conception of the corporation merged with other views. Germanic tribes, for example, maintained that a group entity in and of itself could have a separate identity from that of its members. These influences came together in the body of canon law built around the conception of the church as corporate structure in the Middle Ages. Different theories of the church as corporate body were favored by different individuals but all agreed on one key component: that the church was more than just its members and could maintain an existence perpetually, regardless of the death of any individual member. This, together with discussion as to the relationship between the head of a corporation (such as the Pope) and its members, contributed not only to the development of modern corporations and corporate theory but also set the stage for many ideas that would come to fruition during the enlightenment. Kenneth Pomeranz, an economic historian, argues that the need to perform pseudo-governmental operations (such as the waging of war) accounts for the development of this economic structure in Europe but not in China or in the Middle East. Older corporate entities gained incorporation as "the person/people of xx". This reflected the people who made up the "body" and also emphasised their legal identity. The law classifies a corporation either as a corporation sole (one person) or as a corporation aggregate (any other number). Examples include (the link gives the legal name; the nickname appears in brackets with the nature of the corporation)
- The Governor and Company of the Bank of England (Bank of England — corporation aggregate)
- The Chancellor Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge University — corporation aggregate)
- The President and Fellows of Harvard College (Harvard College — corporation aggregate)
- Her Majesty the Queen in Right of New Zealand (New Zealand Government — corporation sole)
- The Archbishop of Canterbury (corporation sole)
- The Dean, Chapter and Students of the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford of the Foundation of King Henry VIII (Christ Church, Oxford — corporation aggregate) Using strict definitions, universities and colleges count as corporations since they merely comprise groups of people.

Development of modern commercial corporations

college, dating from 7 November 1623, for the amount of 2,400 florins]] Early corporations of the commercial sort were formed under frameworks set up by governments of states to undertake tasks which appeared too risky or too expensive for individuals or governments to embark upon. The alleged oldest commercial corporation in the world, the Stora Kopparberg mining community in Falun, Sweden, reportedly obtained a charter from King Magnus Eriksson in 1347. Many European nations chartered corporations to lead colonial ventures, such as the Dutch East India Company, and these corporations came to play a large part in the history of corporate colonialism. In the United States, government chartering began to fall out of vogue in the mid-1800s. Corporate law at the time was very restrictive and very closely regulated by the states. Forming a corporation usually required an act of legislature. Investors generally had to be given an equal say in corporate governance, and the corporation's activities were tightly restricted to its express purposes. Many private firms in the 19th century avoided the corporate model for these reasons (Andrew Carnegie formed his steel operation as a limited partnership, and John D. Rockefeller set up Standard Oil as a trust). Eventually, state governments began to realize the economic value of providing more permissive corporate laws. New Jersey was the first state to adopt an "enabling" corporate law, with the goal of attracting more business to the state. Delaware followed, and soon became known as the most corporation-friendly state in the country; even today, most major public corporations are set up under Delaware law. The 20th century saw a proliferation of enabling law across the world, which helped to drive economic booms in many countries before and after World War I. After World War II, and especially starting in the 1980s, many countries with large state-owned corporations moved toward privatization, the selling of publicly-owned services and enterprises to private, normally corporate, ownership. Deregulation - reducing the public-interest regulation of corporate activity - often accompanied privatization as part of an ideologically laissez-faire policy. Another major postwar shift was toward conglomerates, in which large corporations purchased smaller corporations to expand their industrial base. Japanese firms developed a horizontal conglomeration model, the keiretsu, which was later duplicated in other countries as well. While corporate efficiency (and profitability) skyrocketed, small shareholder control was diminished and directors of corporations assumed greater control over business, contributing in part to the hostile takeover movement of the 1980s and the accounting scandals that brought down Enron and WorldCom following the turn of the century. More recent corporate developments include downsizing, contracting-out or out-sourcing, off-shoring and scoping down activities to core business, as information technology, global trade regimes, and cheap fossil fuels enable corporations to reduce labour costs, transportation costs and transaction costs, and thereby maximize profits. For a history of corporations that is “pro-corporate”, see John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Company: a Short History of a Revolutionary Idea (New York: Modern Library, 2003). For a history of corporations that is “critical”, see Joel Bakan, The Corporation. The pathological pursuit of profit and power (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2004).

Types of corporations

For-profit and non-profit

Main article: non-profit organization In modern economic systems, the corporate conventions of governance commonly appear in a wide variety of business and non-profit activities. Though the laws governing these creatures of statute often differ, the courts often interpret provisions of the law that apply to profit-making enterprises in the same manner (or in a similar manner) when applying principles to non-profit organizations — as the underlying structures of these two types of entity often resemble each other.

Closely-held and public

The institution most often referenced when the word "corporation" is used, as in the title of the movie The Corporation, is a public or publicly traded corporation, the shares of which are traded on a public market (e.g., the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq) designed specifically for the buying and selling of shares of stock of corporations by and to the general public. Most of the largest businesses in the world are publicly traded corporations. However, the majority of corporations are said to be closely held, privately held or close corporations, meaning that no ready market exists for the trading of ownership interests. Many such corporations are owned and managed by a small group of businesspeople or companies, although the size of such a corporation can be as vast as the largest public corporations. The affairs of publicly traded and closely held corporations are similar in many respects. The main difference in most countries is that publicly traded corporations have an additional burden of complying with securities laws, which (especially in the U.S.) grant further rights to stockholders to protect them from fraud or unfairness in connection with the sale and purchase of stock. The publicly traded corporation must usually follow much more stringent disclosure requirements, and sometimes additional procedural obligations in connection with major transactions (e.g. mergers) or events (e.g. elections of directors).

Multinational corporations

Following on the success of the corporate model at a national level, many corporations have become transnational or multinational corporations: growing beyond national boundaries to attain sometimes remarkable positions of power and influence in the process of globalising. The typical "transnational" or "multinational" may fit into a web of overlapping ownerships and directorships, with multiple branches and lines in different regions, many such sub-groupings comprising corporations in their own right. Growth by expansion may favour national or regional branches; growth by acquisition or merger can result in a plethora of groupings scattered around and/or spanning the globe, with structures and names which do not always make clear the structures of ownership and interaction. In the spread of corporations across multiple continents, the importance of corporate culture has grown as a unifying factor and a counterweight to local national sensibilities and cultural awareness.

National features

There are various types of corporations throughout the world.

United States

In the United States, several corporate forms exist; the name of "corporation" generally applies to a business, run for profit, to which one of the states of the United States has granted a corporate charter. American corporations often charter as a Delaware Corporation in Delaware, which charges no tax on activities outside the state and has courts experienced in commercial law. Corporations set up for privacy or asset protection often charter in Nevada, which allows setting them up with no record of who owns them. The federal government of the United States usually does not grant corporate charters, except for some special instances such as Amtrak and Freddie Mac and banks and credit unions which opt not to receive charters from their home states. Historically, most U.S. states issued charters for fixed lengths of time (for example, a manufacturing corporation might receive a charter good for 40 years), and only by an act of the legislature. In theory, a limited charter forced corporations to remain accountable to government (that is, to the community) for the special privileges granted to them. Investors protested that it actually led to unhealthy amounts of political payoffs and graft. Most states now charter unlimited-term corporations for a small fee, and possibly for a yearly tax. Legally, corporations are accorded some corporate personhood, i.e. Constitutional rights similar to those held by persons. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on this question in the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Many countries around the world now have corporate laws based upon state laws from the United States. For example, corporations in Japan are organized under a variant of the corporate law of Illinois, and corporations in Saudi Arabia follow corporate laws copied from New York. The oldest corporation in the United States, and the oldest in North America, is the President and Fellows of Harvard College (also known as the Harvard Corporation), chartered in 1650.

Canada

In Canada both the federal government and the provinces have corporate statutes, and thus a corporation may have a provincial or a federal charter. Many older corporations in Canada stem from Acts of Parliament passed before the introduction of general corporation law. The oldest corporation in Canada, and second oldest in North America, is the Hudson's Bay Company, chartered in 1670. Federally recognized corporations are regulated by the Canada Business Corporations Act

German-speaking countries

Germany, Austria and Switzerland recognize two forms of corporation: the Aktiengesellschaft (AG), analogous to public corporations in the English-speaking world, and the Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (GmbH), similar to (and an inspiration for) the modern limited liability company.

Corporate taxation

In many countries, including the United States and United Kingdom, corporate profits are taxed at a corporate tax rate, and dividends paid to shareholders are taxed at a separate rate. Such a system is sometimes referred to as "double taxation," because any profits distributed to shareholders will eventually be taxed twice. One solution to this (as in the case of UK tax system) is for the recipient of the dividend to be entitled to a tax credit which addresses the fact that the profits represented by the dividend have already been taxed. The company profit being passed on is therefore effectively only taxed at the rate of tax paid by the eventual recipient of the dividend. Where a double taxation system exists, the additional tax burden is often an incentive for smaller businesses to organize in the form of a partnership, limited liability company, or other type of entity that is not separately taxed. Such entities are often called "pass-through entities." In the United States, business corporations owe taxes according to two basic categories. A "C corporation" must pay corporate taxes, while "S corporations" pay no corporate taxes but instead pass profits and losses directly to their owners (the stockholders) who declare such profits and losses as part of their personal taxable income. An S corporation must generally have no more than 100 stockholders, who must be natural persons (not other corporations or entities), must reside in the United States, and must consent to the classification; moreover, the S corporation can only issue a single class of stock. As a result of these restrictions, all publicly traded corporations and many larger close corporations have C corporation status. Certain kinds of investment companies are also exempt from corporate income taxes, provided they distribute almost all of their income to shareholders in the form of dividends or capital gains distributions.

Other commercial entities

Several other forms of business entity exist under the laws of various countries. These include:
- Partnership
- Limited partnership (LP)
- Limited liability partnership (LLP)
- Limited liability company (LLC)
- Sole proprietorship

Quotes

- Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like. —Lord Thurlow
- An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. —"Corporation" as defined by Ambrose Bierce in The Devil's Dictionary
- The opinion of the Court, after mature deliberation, is that this [a corporate charter] is a contract, the obligation of which cannot be impaired without violating the Constitution of the United States. —Chief Justice John Marshall, Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819).

External links

- [http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Corporations.html Corporations] — article by Robert Hessen
- [http://www.company-formation-glossary.co.uk Company Formation Glossary]
- [http://www.ukcorporator.co.uk/guidance/G59.php Standard UK Company Formation Configurations]
- [http://www.gangsofamerica.com/ Gangs of America by Ted Nace] — A free book on historical and legal bases of Corporations Category:Business law Category:Corporations law Category:Legal entities Category:Types of companies ko:주식회사 ja:株式会社

Jargon

:For the glossary of hacker slang, see Jargon File. Jargon is a type of terminology which is used in conjunction with a specific activity, e.g. medical jargon, legal jargon, and other proffessions as well as specific fields. The social purposes of jargon are threefold: communication, inclusion and exclusion. The first goal of any jargon is to facilitate communicating information, often by the invention of shorthand terms or the use of technical terms that may be obscure to most people but useful to people who use them on a daily basis. However, while jargon may be born in and mainly refer to a specific activity or profession, activities which have jargon often also are to a certain extent a subculture and thus a jargon can also be a type of slang. Therefore, it serves as a means of inclusion and exclusion : someone who speaks a group's jargon is identified as a fellow member, while someone who does not understand the same jargon is marked as an outsider. Jargon is used for instance in sports, where technical sportsman terms but also sport-related metaphors for other events in life are used by sports fans for the aforementioned purposes. For obvious reasons, jargon is used a lot in technical professions; see Technical terminology. The rise of information technology and the Internet created many overlapping jargons used by nerds, geeks and hackers to communicate, the very proper usage of these words being a major prerequisite for inclusion in these groups. See Jargon file. Often, beginning writers and speakers in uncertain social roles make the mistake of using specialized jargon inappropriately. When the jargon is used incorrectly, this is often known as a Malapropism. The term comes from the name of a character in a play--The Rivals--by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. However, Mrs. Malaprop did not restrict herself to misusing technical or scientific words. Another error may be the description of any complex word as "jargon", where the speaker or writer's idea or feeling is the target. The clearest statement of this type of error is found in The Jargon of Authenticity by Theodore Wiesengrund Adorno, where the author identifies a certain type of "authentic" language, said to be free of complex jargon, as itself a jargoning and used against certain types of feelings associated with "high" culture in favor of a "people's" culture. Adorno himself was accused by Bertolt Brecht and Frankfurt students of inauthenticity in that Adorno used words from high culture to describe his own attitudes, and for this reason, The Jargon of Authenticity was a bit of a
- cri de coeur
- despite its lofty tone, somewhat in the manner of Dr.Zhivago's father in Pasternak's novel, who, upon being thrown out of his
- dacha
- , cries "I'm one of the people too!". To describe an idea as jargon accomplishes in Bourdieu's terms several tasks. It maintain's the speaker's "distinction" and social role as critic and judge, while at time excusing the speaker from listening or reading with attention, and it also expresses a safe, egalitarian attitude. Indeed, these meta-attitudes and this more sophisticated use of the concept of jargon is today possibly more frequent than guild-like insider jargon. As it happens, today's professional organizations have legal structures of access which enable their members to override differences in "jargon" in such a manner that doctors, and to an extent lawyers, can understand each other across national and cultural boundaries. In technical efforts across those borders, terms of art and jargon are readily resolved as part of daily life in informative conversation. In daily affairs, one indication that the use of "jargon" as an accusation of intellectual insider trading may be in some bad faith is the fact that people feel, when subject to a barrage of terms of art in literary criticism, where the author makes an effort to define each such term of art, that the author is still guilty of using jargon. The late Jacques Derrida, and his adepts, were accused of inappropriately using a specialized jargon despite the fact that much of their work is a prolix attempt to define "deconstruction" and other such terms of art while doing justice to the necessity of self-application, and not standing outside the phenomenon of the text, in more bad faith. The accepted feeling, as reflected in journalistic accounts which in turn reflect settled educated opinion about these matters (an opinion not without its problems), is that the matters of which the author, such as the literary critic, speak, can be spoken of without terms of art or "jargon". The problem then becomes the repetition of definitions which in replacing catch-phrases only expand the text, leading to further weariness with mere prolixity, which itself is misidentified often as jargon. Indeed, there are contexts, especially electronic mail, where the use of deliberate and not-so-deliberate errors in style, grammar and spelling is so fashionable that mere grammatical writing and spelling can itself be the target of an accusation of "jargon". The jargon of authenticity, and the readiness to accuse the writer or speaker of jargoning, is far more common than first-order jargon today, as is the fear of guild formation and the fear of nonmonetary "insider trading" when members of a profession or para-profession collaborate, and generally, today, economic demands for results prevent this from occuring. Instead, a looser and demotic "terminology" takes hold in contexts where the midlevel fear of giving offense to powerful but aliterate outsiders (such as CEOs and politicians) overrides anything like professional solidarity or precision in speech. The jargon of "jargoning" itself evolved from a pleasant association about the time of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who referred in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to the "sweet" jargoning of birds to today's usage, which is "unpleasant sounds I don't understand". This is a shift in attitude about language and mystery in which the listener and the reader demands clarity at all costs and today is unimpressed by fancy words. Coleridge was writing about unmapped regions of the globe, and unexplored regions of experience, but today, an all-pervading sense of surveillance, both directed at the common reader, and also under his power as on the Internet, makes us, perhaps, feel that any mysteries are being deliberately manufactured by "jargon".

External link

- [http://www.LanguageMonitor.com LanguageMonitor] - Watchdog on contemporary English usage See also Jargon compliance, lingo, pidgin, Wiktionary: Jargon, slang and for examples:
- Jargon code
- Chinook jargon
- Corporate jargon
- Mathematical jargon
- Computer jargon
- Poker jargon
- List of lumberjack jargon
- List of baseball jargon Category:Language varieties and styles ja:隠語 simple:Jargon

Peer-to-peer

P2P redirects here. For the telecommunications term PTP, see Point-to-Point.
P2P can also stand for Pay-to-play in gaming.

A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively few number of servers. P2P networks are typically used for connecting nodes via largely ad hoc connections. Such networks are useful for many purposes. Sharing content files (see file sharing) containing audio, video, data or anything in digital format is very common, and realtime data, such as telephony traffic, is also passed using P2P technology. A pure peer-to-peer network does not have the notion of clients or servers, but only equal peer nodes that simultaneously function as both "clients" and "servers" to the other nodes on the network. This model of network arrangement differs from the client-server model where communication is usually to and from a central server. A typical example for a non peer-to-peer file transfer is an FTP server where the client and server programs are quite distinct, and the clients initiate the download/uploads and the servers react to and satisfy these requests. Some networks and channels, such as Napster, OpenNAP, or IRC @find, use a client-server structure for some tasks (e.g., searching) and a peer-to-peer structure for others. Networks such as Gnutella or Freenet use a peer-to-peer structure for all purposes, and are sometimes referred to as true peer-to-peer networks, although Gnutella is greatly facilitated by directory servers that inform peers of the network addresses of other peers. Peer-to-peer architecture embodies one of the key technical concepts of the internet, described in the first internet Request for Comments, "RFC 1, Host Software" [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1.txt] dated 7 April 1969. More recently, the concept has achieved recognition in the general public in the context of the absence of central indexing servers in architectures used for exchanging multimedia files.

Operation of peer-to-peer networks

Three major types of P2P network are: Pure P2P:
- Peers act as clients and server
- There is no central server
- There is no central router Hybrid P2P:
- Has a central server that keeps information on peers and responds to requests for that information.
- Peers are responsible for hosting the information (as the central server does not store files), for letting the central server know what files they want to share, and for downloading its shareable resources to peers that request it.
- Route terminals are used addresses, which are referenced by a set of indices to obtain an absolute address. Mixed P2P:
- Has both pure and hybrid characteristics

Advantages of peer-to-peer networks

An important goal in peer-to-peer networks is that all clients provide resources, including bandwidth, storage space, and computing power. Thus, as nodes arrive and demand on the system increases, the total capacity of the system also increases. This is not true of a client-server architecture with a fixed set of servers, in which adding more clients could mean slower data transfer for all users. The distributed nature of peer-to-peer networks also increases robustness in case of failures by replicating data over multiple peers, and -- in pure P2P systems -- by enabling peers to find the data without relying on a centralized index server. In the latter case, there is no single point of failure in the system. When the term peer-to-peer was used to describe the Napster network, it implied that the peer protocol nature was important, but, in reality, the great achievement of Napster was the empowerment of the peers (i.e., the fringes of the network) in association with a central index, which made it fast and efficient to locate available content. The peer protocol was just a common way to achieve this.

Academic peer-to-peer network

Recently, developers at Pennsylvania State University, in conjunction with Massachusetts Institute of Technology Open Knowledge Initiative, researchers at Simon Fraser University, and the Internet P2P Working Group, have been working on an academic application for the peer-to-peer network. This project referred to as LionShare is based on a second generation network, more specifically the Gnutella model. The main purpose of this network is to share academic material between users at many different academic institutions. The LionShare network is based on a hybrid model that mixes the Gnutella decentralized peer-to-peer network with a more traditional client-server network. Users of this program are able to upload files to a server where they can be shared continuously, regardless of whether or not the user is online. This network allows for a much smaller than normal sharing community. The main difference between this network and virtually all other peer-to-peer networks is the fact that the users of LionShare will not be anonymous. The purpose of this is to deter the sharing of copyrighted material over the network, and thus avoid legal issues. Another difference is the ability to selectively share individual files with specific groups. A user is able to select on an individual basis which users are able to receive an individual file or group of files. This technology is needed in the academic community because of the use of more and larger multimedia files in the classroom setting. More and more professors are using multimedia files such as audio, video and slide show. Transferring these files to students is a difficult task that would be made much easier by a network such as LionShare.

Legal controversy

Under US law, "the Betamax decision" case holds that copying "technologies" are not inherently illegal, if substantial non-infringing use can be made of them. This decision, predating the widespread use of the Internet applies to most data networks, including peer-to-peer networks, since distribution of correctly licensed files can be performed. These non-infringing uses include sending open source software, public domain files and out of copyright works. Other jurisdictions tend to view the situation in somewhat si

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