title: Cold Mountain (film)

text: "Cold Mountain" was met with overall positive reviews from critics, with Zellweger's performance receiving widespread critical acclaim. According to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 70% of 232 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 6.70/10. The site's critics consensus states: "The well-crafted "Cold Mountain" has an epic sweep and captures the horror and brutal hardship of war." On Metacritic, the film was assigned a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of B+ on scale of A+ to F.


title: Cold Mountain (film)

text: Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, noting that "It evokes a backwater of the Civil War with rare beauty, and lights up with an assortment of colorful supporting characters." Richard Corliss, film critic for "Time", gave the film a positive review. He called it "A grand and poignant movie epic about what is lost in war and what's worth saving in life. It is also a rare blend of purity and maturity—the year's most rapturous love story." In his movie guide, Leonard Maltin gave the film 3 1/2 stars out of 4, writing "Minghella's adaptation of the Charles Frazier best-seller captures both the grimness of battle and the starkness of life on the home front in the South," and concluded the film was "Meticulously crafted" with "First-rate performances all around."


title: Cold Mountain (film)

text: "Cold Mountain: Music from the Motion Picture" shares producer T Bone Burnett with the soundtrack for "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", a largely old-time and folk album with limited radio play that still enjoyed commercial success, and garnered a Grammy. As a result, comparisons were drawn between the two albums. The soundtrack, however, also employs many folk and blues elements.


title: Cold Mountain (film)

text: It features songs written by Jack White of The White Stripes (who also appeared in the film in the role of Georgia), Elvis Costello and Sting. Costello and Sting's contributions, "The Scarlet Tide" and "You Will Be My Ain True Love", were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song and featured vocals by bluegrass singer Alison Krauss. Gabriel Yared's Oscar-nominated score is represented by four tracks amounting to approximately fifteen minutes of music.


title: Cold Mountain (film)

text: The film was nominated for more than seventy awards, including seven Academy Award nominations. Renée Zellweger won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in the film.


title: Starz

text: Starz (stylized as STARZ since 2016; pronounced "stars") is an American premium cable and satellite television network owned by Lions Gate Entertainment, and is the flagship property of parent subsidiary Starz Inc. Programming on Starz consists of theatrically released motion pictures and first-run original television series. Created in 1994 as a multiplex service of Encore (now Starz Encore), Starz operates six 24-hour, linear multiplex channels; a traditional subscription video on demand service; and a namesake over-the-top streaming platform that both acts as a TV Everywhere offering for Starz's linear television subscribers and is sold directly to streaming-only consumers.


title: Starz

text: Starz is also sold independently of traditional and over-the-top multichannel video programming distributors a la carte through Apple TV Channels and Amazon Video Channels, which feature VOD library content and live feeds of Starz's linear television services (consisting of the primary channel's East and West Coast feeds and, for Amazon Video customers, the East Coast feeds of its five multiplex channels). Starz's programming has been licensed for use by a number of channels and platforms worldwide, and the brand name is licensed by Bell Media for a companion channel of the Canadian-based company's Crave premium service.


title: Starz

text: Starz and its sister networks, Starz Encore and MoviePlex, are headquartered in Santa Monica, California, with satellite office facilities located at the Meridian International Business Center complex in Englewood, Colorado, and at a small office located on 5th Avenue in New York City. , Starz was available to approximately 28.517 million U.S. households that had a subscription to a multichannel television provider (27.675 million of which receive Starz's primary channel at minimum).


title: Starz

text: Starz, originally stylized as "STARZ!" with an exclamation point, was launched at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time on February 1, 1994, primarily on cable systems operated by Tele-Communications Inc.; the first two movies aired on the network were dramas released in 1992: respectively, "Scent of a Woman" and "The Crying Game". The network was operated as a joint venture between TCI and Liberty Media (both companies were controlled by John Malone), with TCI owning a 50.1% controlling interest in the channel.


title: Starz

text: Starz made its debut as the first phase of a seven-channel thematic multiplex that was launched by Starz (then Encore Media Group) over the course of the succeeding eight months, with the remaining six channels being launched between July and September 1994. The multiplex was intended to only include six channels, but on May 31, 1993, Encore acquired the pay cable rights to telecast recent feature films from Universal Pictures released after that year; as a result, TCI/Liberty decided to create an additional premium pay TV service to serve as a competitor to HBO and Showtime. The network carried the moniker "Encore 8" in its on-air branding as part of a numbering system that was used by Encore's multiplex channels. Early trademark filings indicated that TCI/Liberty proposed names including "Applause" and "Stars" for the service (the "s" in the latter was ultimately changed to a "z" in the final naming).


title: Starz

text: Starz focused more on recent feature films, while Starz Encore (then Encore) focused on films released between the 1960s and the 1980s, before adding recent film fare itself in July 1999. It also held the television rights to releases from Carolco Pictures, New Line Cinema (as well as its sibling labels Fine Line Features and Turner Pictures), and the Walt Disney Company–owned studios Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures and Miramax. Films from those studios were not carried on Starz until 1997, after Disney's output agreement with Showtime for its non-family-oriented films concluded. The network restricted the scheduling of films that contained graphic sexual or violent content to late evening and overnight time periods.


title: Starz

text: Starz's availability was mainly limited to TCI's systems at launch, debuting with a one-month free preview available to prospective subscribers; it would eventually sign its first major carriage agreement outside the TCI group, through a deal with Continental Cablevision in September 1995. Starz was available to an estimated 2.8 million pay television subscribers by 1996, only one million of whom had subscribed to a cable or satellite provider other than TCI. As a startup network, Starz endured major losses during its early years, with total deficits topping US$203 million and annual losses of US$150 million by 1997. It was predicted to lose an additional US$300 million in revenue before it was predicted to break even. In June 1997, Comcast signed an agreement to carry the network on its Pennsylvania and New Jersey systems to replace Philadelphia-based PRISM after that network shut down that October following the loss of its (and sister network SportsChannel Philadelphia's) sports programming to Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia. Partly in an effort to get the network's substantial losses off its books, TCI announced a deal on June 2, 1997, in which it transferred majority ownership of the corporate entity that operated Starz, Encore Media Group, to sister company Liberty Media; TCI retained a 20% minority ownership interest in Encore Media Group. Liberty Media assumed the former company's stake in the subsidiary in 1999, following TCI's merger with AT&T Corporation.


title: Starz

text: By May 1998, Starz maintained a subscriber base reaching 7.6 million households with a cable or satellite television subscription.


title: Starz

text: The network gained carriage deals with many other major U.S. cable and satellite providers by the early 2000s, particularly with the adoption of digital cable, allowing for providers to add channels that they (even with capacity expansions of up to 60 channels) previously had limited room to carry.


title: Starz

text: Encore Media Group was renamed the Starz Encore Media Group in 2000. As part of a corporate restructuring plan in 2003, Starz Encore Group eliminated 100 jobs in its nine regional offices, and closed four of the offices outright. On March 25, 2005, the Starz Encore Group corporate entity was renamed Starz Entertainment. A few days later, on March 28, 2005, Starz introduced a new logo, and was subsequently rebranded as "starz", in all lowercase.


title: Starz

text: On November 19, 2009, Liberty Media spun off Starz into a separate public tracking stock called Liberty Starz. On January 1, 2010, Chris Albrecht joined Starz as its president and chief executive officer, then overseeing all of the Starz entities including Starz Entertainment, Overture Films, Anchor Bay Entertainment and Film Roman. On August 8, 2012, Liberty Media announced that it would spin off the Liberty Starz subsidiary into a separate publicly traded company. The spin-off of the subsidiary was completed on January 11, 2013, with Liberty Starz changing its name to Starz as a result.


title: Starz

text: On April 5, 2016, Starz was rebranded, introducing a new logo, this time stylized as "STARZ" in all uppercase. As part of the rebranding, Starz added all the Encore channels to its moniker, therefore increasing the Starz channel lineup to 14 Starz premium channels. Its main channel was rebranded Starz Encore and carries reruns of Starz Originals in addition to films.


title: Starz

text: On June 30, 2016, Lionsgate agreed to acquire Starz Inc. for $4.4 billion in cash and stock; the acquisition was completed five months later on December 8.


title: Starz

text: In April 2019, Starz was widely criticized in the tech press and by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for sending legal demands to Twitter in order to remove links to a news article which discussed piracy but contained neither pirated content nor links to pirated content. Starz initially responded by issuing further DMCA complaints against those criticizing them, including against a tweet from the Electronic Frontier Foundation stating that "Starz should withdraw its takedown and refrain from harassing journalists". However, they subsequently apologized, clarified that the invalid DMCA claims were sent on their behalf by a third party contractor called The Social Element and promised that they are "working with our vendors to reinstate any such content that was inappropriately targeted for removal."


title: Starz

text: Depending on the service provider, Starz provides up to twelve multiplex channels – six 24-hour multiplex channels, all of which are simulcast in both standard definition and high definition – as well as a subscription video-on-demand service (Starz On Demand). Starz broadcasts its primary and multiplex channels on Eastern and Pacific Time Zone schedules. The respective coastal feeds of each channel are usually packaged together (though most cable providers only offer the east and west coast feeds of the main Starz channel), resulting in the difference in local airtimes for a particular movie or program between two geographic locations being three hours at most.


title: Starz

text: The premium film services Encore and MoviePlex, which are also owned by Starz, Inc., operate as separate services; as such, subscribers to one of the services do not have to subscribe to any of the others. Some providers offer Encore and MoviePlex's multiplex channels on a separate digital cable tier from Starz. However, Encore and, depending on its carriage, MoviePlex are frequently sold together in a package with Starz.


title: Starz

text: In 1994, Encore launched the pay television industry's first "themed" multiplex service – seven additional movie channels that each focused on a specific genre. This was intended to include only six channels, but Encore decided to launch Starz as a competitor to HBO and Showtime after it acquired the pay-TV rights to broadcast films by Universal Studios released after 1993. A numbering system was used for each service to identify itself as an Encore channel, though this system was abandoned for most of the channels in 1996, with the tagline "an encore network" (which Starz! also used, albeit sparingly) being used from then until 2002. Starz continued to heavily include the "Encore 8" moniker in its main IDs, feature presentation bumpers and select bumpers until 2002, even as it transitioned into a separate channel from Encore.


title: Starz

text: The tie to Encore branding-wise continued even as Starz was given its own slate of multiplex channels in the late 1990s. The first of these to debut was Starz! 2 in 1996, maintaining a set lineup of four different movies scheduled at the same times each day (inspired by the scheduling used by movie theaters) with the slate of films changing each Friday. This was followed in 1997 by the debut of a joint venture with BET Networks called BET Movies: Starz! 3. Two additional multiplex channels began operations in May 1999. Starz! Family carried family-oriented theatrical and home video film releases, was launched possibly in response to HBO's own family-oriented multiplex channel, HBO Family, which debuted three years earlier. The other service was Starz! Cinema, a channel featuring critically acclaimed independent films and movies outside the mainstream cinema. Starz! 2 was also renamed Starz! Theater to better reflect its format.


title: Starz

text: The first changes made following the original rollout of the multiplex occurred in 2001, with the rebranding of BET Movies: Starz! as Black Starz! after BET withdrew from the partnership during its acquisition by Viacom (which owned rival pay service Showtime at the time) in 2001. A seventh Starz multiplex channel was launched in 2004: Starz! Kids was created as a movie service featuring films aimed at children between 2 and 11 years of age, maintaining a format similar to that of Starz! Family. Unlike the other Starz multiplex channels, Starz! Kids was launched on cable systems on a case-by-case basis instead of on a broader national scale.


title: Starz

text: The entire multiplex was overhauled on March 28, 2005, as part of an extensive rebranding of the Starz and Encore services. While Encore debuted a slightly modified logo and applied the "Encore" brand to the names of its six multiplex channels, Starz underwent a more dramatic makeover, with a completely redesigned logo – which included the exclamation mark being dropped from the channel's name – and a standardized graphics package that was implemented across all of its channels (with some modifications for each channel's format). The programming formats of several channels changed entirely: Starz! Theater was relaunched as Starz Edge, a movie channel aimed primarily at men 18 to 34 years old (nicknamed "The New Generation" by the channel). Starz! Kids and Starz! Family were combined into a single channel called Starz Kids and Family, to make room for a new channel focusing on comedic feature films called Starz Comedy. Black Starz! also changed its name to Starz InBlack. The only multiplex channel (other than the primary feed) that retained its original name was Starz Cinema.


title: Starz

text: The Starz multiplex has been marketed under several names over the years including the "Starz Encore Super Pak" and the "Starz Super Pak". The multiplex now has no "official" marketed name .


title: Starz

text: On March 28, 2016, Starz introduced a new logo and tagline, "Obsessable". This coincides with a revamp of the Starz channels effective April 5 of that year. All of Encore's channels will now take on the "Starz" brand, while Encore's main channel will be rebranded "Starz Encore", which will air reruns of Starz originals in addition to films. Starz now has 14 channels in its package.


title: Starz

text: Starz HD is a high-definition simulcast feed of Starz that broadcasts in the 1080i resolution format. In addition to its main channel, Starz also operates high-definition simulcast feeds of its five multiplex channels. When it was launched in December 2003, the simulcast covered only the east and west coast feeds of the main Starz channel. An enhanced-definition simulcast feed and a separate HD channel called Sharper Movies HD, that would have broadcast in the 1080i format and be structured similarly to the original format of sister channel Encore's MoviePlex (in which Sharper Movies would broadcast programming from each Starz channel in daily sampler blocks), were also planned. Plans for the latter service were dropped because of a lack of interest from providers to charge a premium fee for the network. HD feeds of Starz Kids and Family, Starz Comedy and Starz Edge, followed in 2007.


title: Starz

text: The remaining Starz multiplex channels, Starz Cinema and Starz In Black, launched their HD simulcast feeds on June 23, 2010, with DirecTV becoming the first provider to offer all six channels (including both coastal feeds of the primary Starz channel) in HD. Among others, Starz HD is carried nationally by satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network and regionally by Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-verse, Comcast Xfinity, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Cablevision and Charter Communications.


title: Starz

text: Starz operates a video-on-demand (VOD) television service called Starz On Demand, which is available at no additional charge to new and existing Starz subscribers. The service was launched on September 19, 2001, debuting on Adelphia Communications' Cleveland, Ohio system. The service offers early premieres of feature films that are scheduled to premiere on Starz, up to one month prior to their pay cable debut on the primary linear channel. Starz on Demand's rotating program selection incorporates selected new titles that are added each Friday, and existing program titles held over from the previous one to two weeks. The Starz On Demand name was also used for an online broadband streaming movie service operated by Starz and RealNetworks from 2003 to 2004. In March 2011, Starz On Demand launched a third VOD service (in addition to its standard-definition and high-definition VOD services), offering movies presented in 3D to customers of Comcast and Verizon FiOS at no additional charge.


title: Starz

text: The original incarnation of Starzplay was a website and mobile app that featured original programming and feature film content from Starz available for streaming in standard or high definition. It was available to Starz subscribers of Verizon FIOS, AT&T U-verse, Cox Communications, Xfinity by Comcast and DirecTV until it was merged with Starz.com on April 5, 2016. The former incarnation of the Starzplay online service (which is structured as a TV Everywhere-style service) was launched on October 8, 2012, with the release of the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch app until they were merged with Starz.com on April 5, 2016.


title: Starz

text: The Starzplay name was borrowed from a prior service offered in conjunction with Netflix. It was created in 2008 after the subscription streaming service struck an agreement with Starz Entertainment to allow Netflix to sub-license rights to films from distributors that maintain output deals with the linear Starz channel for online viewing – in lieu of acquiring the digital distribution rights on its own, due to the expense of acquiring newer film titles – as Netflix is considered to be merely a "content aggregator". Because Netflix chose to sub-license digital rights through Starz instead of negotiating with the studios, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures threatened not to renew its output deal with Starz unless it either discontinued its deal with Netflix or paid Disney a licensing fee for digital streaming rights to its films (Netflix ended up assuming rights to most film releases by Walt Disney Studios from Starz in 2016).


title: Starz

text: Starzplay (as a Netflix service) was first made available to Starz subscribers of the Verizon FiOS television service. Starz content (including most of its original programming and series content that the channel acquired through domestic and international distributors) was made available on Netflix's "Watch Instantly" platform. It was the third subscription video-on-demand online streaming service operated by Starz: Starz Ticket operated from 2004 to 2006, under a joint venture between Starz Entertainment and RealNetworks. Starz offered its own separate online movie service, Vongo, to its subscribers from 2006 until it discontinued the service on September 30, 2008.


title: Starz

text: On September 1, 2011, Starz announced that it would not renew its streaming agreement with Netflix, which ended on February 28, 2012; movie titles that are available on DVD from Sony Pictures, Disney and other studios that maintain pay television distribution deals with Starz were not affected and can be acquired from Netflix by this method. With the expiration of the Netflix deal, film content from studios with which Starz maintains broadcast rights were no longer available for online streaming, particularly as Netflix and certain similar services such as Vudu did not have separate streaming rights to films from these individual studios. Prior to the beta launch of its Starz Online service (which became Starzplay upon its official launch), Starz announced on November 18, 2011 that it was developing a streaming application for mobile devices, allowing the network's subscribers – and in early reports, speculation that possibly non-subscription television subscribers would be allowed as well – to view Starz's series and film content. The app was released on October 9, 2012 for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, and on May 7, 2013 for Android devices. An app for authenticated subscribers for the Xbox 360 was released on December 3, 2013, followed by a similar app for the Xbox One on August 5, 2014.


title: Starz

text: Lionsgate+ (previously Starzplay), Starzplay Arabia, and Lionsgate Play (in the south and Southeast Asia region) are Starz' international streaming services for viewers outside North America.


title: Starz

text: Starzplay Arabia was the first Starz-branded service to be localized outside the United States, launching on April 2, 2015 in 17 countries in the Middle East and North Africa region, breaching those territories before its biggest competitor in media streaming being Netflix. Starzplay Arabia remains available even as the U.S. version of the service has been discontinued. In 2018, the service became available in Pakistan, the first country outside the MENA region where Starzplay was available. In 2019, Starzplay was launched in Brazil, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom. In 2020, it became available in Argentina, Chile, and Italy. In March 2022, a 57% majority stake in Starzplay Arabia was acquired by a consortium, led by e& (formerly known as Etisalat) and the Abu Dhabi-based investment group ADQ. The deal was valued at $420m. In January 2021, Starzplay Arabia signed a deal with Abu Dhabi Media, which allows subscribers to watch UFC fights and events live.


title: Starz

text: In several countries, Lionsgate+ is provided through partnerships with cable services, such as Vodafone in Spain, Movistar TV in Argentina, IndiHome in Indonesia and PLDT Home in the Philippines or within Apple TV as well.


title: Starz

text: On September 28, 2022, Lionsgate announced the international Starzplay service would be rebranded as Lionsgate+ the following day in most countries, eliminating much of the conflict between Lionsgate and Disney's Star brand. The Starzplay Arabia and Lionsgate Play services will not be affected at this time, while Starz in the U.S. and Canada merely rebranded with a new version of the "STARZ" logo.


title: Starz

text: In November 2022, it was announced that Lionsgate+ was ending operations in the markets of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Benelux, the Nordics, and Japan before the end of the company's fiscal year.


title: Starz

text: On April 5, 2016, Starz launched a new app and over-the-top subscription service to compete with HBO Now and Showtime's OTT subscription service. The new app, which replaced the StarzPlay service, allowed users to access Starz programming regardless of whether they had a TV package or not. The Starz app also includes offline playback functionality, allowing users to download and watch content without an internet connection.


title: Starz

text: In response to the discontinuation of StarzPlay, Comcast has blocked access to the new Starz app for Comcast Xfinity customers, forcing them to instead access the network's authenticated content through the Xfinity app and website and older StarzPlay apps on platforms such as Roku. Currently, Comcast is the only major distributor to do this.


title: Starz

text: In the winter of 2015, Amazon Video began offering Starz and rival premium network Showtime as add-on subscriptions for their customers; the cost is $8.99 per month, after a seven-day free trial. The content deal between Amazon and Starz not only offers the channel's current and back catalog of programming, but also movies and classic TV series currently airing on Encore and its branded networks, as well as live East Coast feeds of the Starz-branded networks and Encore.


title: Starz

text: , Starz and sister networks Starz Encore and MoviePlex maintain exclusive first-run film licensing agreements with Sony Pictures Entertainment (since January 2005; including content from subsidiaries Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Classics, Screen Gems, Destination Films, Triumph Films, and TriStar Pictures, but not Sony Pictures Animation because they have a separate deal with Netflix), Anchor Bay Entertainment, EuropaCorp and Warren Miller Films (since 1997).


title: Starz

text: The first-run film output agreement with Sony was renewed for nine years on February 11, 2013; the Warren Miller output deal was renewed for ten years on October 19, 2009. On April 8, 2021, Sony announced that they would not be renewing the agreement with Starz in favor of a new first-run agreement with Netflix. On July 15, 2021, Starz reached a licensing deal with Universal Pictures for first-run movies 18 months after they stream on Peacock and Prime Video respectively.


title: Starz

text: Starz also shows sub-runs (runs of films that have recently received broadcast or syndicated television airings) of theatrical films from Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (including subsidiaries Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, and Hollywood Pictures - all for films released before 2016), Warner Bros. Entertainment (including content from subsidiaries New Line Cinema, Turner Entertainment – both for films released prior to 2005 – and Castle Rock Entertainment), Universal Pictures (including content from subsidiaries Universal Animation Studios, Focus Features, and DreamWorks Animation all for films released prior to 2003), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (including content from subsidiaries United Artists, Orion Pictures, and The Samuel Goldwyn Company), Paramount Pictures (including content from DreamWorks Pictures (pre-2011), Republic Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies, Miramax, Paramount Vantage and television rights to the Cannon Films and Carolco Pictures libraries), Revolution Studios, Overture Films, Yari Film Group, and the network's sister company Lions Gate Entertainment (since 2012).


title: Starz

text: Films for which Starz has pay-cable rights usually also run on Encore and MoviePlex during the duration of its term of licensing. From 1995 to 2002, Starz had broadcast occasional original made-for-pay cable movies produced by the in-house company Starz! Pictures.


title: Starz

text: In January 1997, Starz secured a licensing agreement with Paramount Pictures, broadcasting over 300 titles. Paramount's first contract with Starz expired in January 2006. In April 2013, Starz reassumed sub-run rights to Paramount Pictures' feature film releases. Films that were initially broadcast through this deal included "Dear God", "All I Want for Christmas" and "Boomerang".


title: Starz

text: At the time of its launch, Starz had secured exclusive first-run film rights with Universal Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Miramax, New Line Cinema, Walt Disney Pictures, and Carolco Pictures. Between 1995 and 2005, Starz had also broadcast films from Turner Pictures and New Line Cinema. Starz's contract with Universal expired in late 2002, with HBO and Starz sharing half of Universal's films during the 2003 calendar year before HBO assumed pay television rights in 2004.


title: Starz

text: The first-run film output agreement with Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures expired after December 2015, with Netflix assuming pay television rights in January 2016 (excluding films released by Touchstone Pictures, which were retained by Starz through a separate contract). Through at least the first half of 2016, Starz provided Disney films that were released before the expiration, such as "Inside Out" and "The Good Dinosaur", but none released after, such as "Zootopia".


title: Starz

text: Starz expanded its program offerings to include some original television series by the late 1990s with five entertainment news programs and shows that focused on the making of upcoming or current feature films (such as "Starz Movie News" and "Hollywood One on One"); some of these programs were also aired on Encore. In 2005, Starz began expanding its original programming slate in order to compete with rivals Showtime and HBO, with the inclusion of scripted series. Some of the initial series (such as "Kung Faux", "The Bronx Bunny Show" and "Head Case") maintained running times considered unconventional for a live-action series, usually running under 15 minutes in length; half-hour and hour-long series were eventually incorporated on the schedule by 2010 (including shows such as "Spartacus, " in 2011, "Boss" and "Da Vinci's Demons").


title: Starz

text: The number of original series that debuted each year on Starz has varied, reaching a high of four series during the 2011 calendar year. In 2013, Starz gave a series order to "Outlander", a drama based on the "Outlander" book series by Diana Gabaldon. The project, from "Battlestar Galactica" developer Ronald D. Moore and Sony Pictures Television, received a 16-episode order, with production beginning in Scotland (where the books are set) in October 2013. "Outlander" has received five nominations for the 2015 Women's Image Network Awards, including a nomination in the Drama Series category. Caitriona Balfe, who plays the leading character in the show, also received a nomination in the Actress Drama Series category.


title: Starz

text: After Starz's 2016 acquisition by Lionsgate, the network has moved to produce more original content, with president of programming Carmi Zlotnik calling Starz a "content pump" for Lionsgate.


title: Starz

text: Multiplex channel Starz Kids & Family also features some series programming, which are aimed at young children and preteens. That channel runs two program blocks: "Building Blocks", a block airing on Monday through Saturday mornings that features animated series (such as "Dragon Hunters", "Gawayn", "Zombie Hotel", "Savage Family Wild" and "Matt's Monsters") and the "Six Block" (originally titled "Camp Block" from its launch in March 2011 until the two-hour block was moved from mid-afternoon slots varying on the film schedule to a set timeslot of 6:00 pm Eastern Time in January 2012), a teenage-focused block airing weekday afternoons that features mainly imported series from English-speaking countries outside of America like Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom (such as "Wingin' It",


title: Starz

text: "Genie in the House", "Majority Rules" and "Sadie J"). The two blocks are similar to those seen on sister channel Encore's multiplex channel Encore Wam between 1994 and 2009.


title: Starz

text: Starz Entertainment has expanded considerably with the presence of its Starz and Encore family of multiplex networks, as well as ventures into television and film production, and home video distribution.


title: Starz

text: Starz's logo has incorporated a star in some form since its launch. In the original logo that was used from its launch in February 1994 until March 27, 2005, the star was composed of a two silhouettes (one star being embedded within a larger one), and a "STARZ!" logotype styled after 1930s-era movie poster typography. The original accompanying graphics were set around a CGI movie theater, with the main network ID featuring seats that opened by themselves, various theater imagery and even images resembling the Caduceus, while feature presentation bumpers also heavily used the movie theater themes (using spotlights and film canisters) and the "Encore 8" branding. The "theater" look that had been used since the network's launch was ultimately abandoned in May 2002, when it switched to a package based around natural themes (particularly water); a seven-note fanfare was also introduced as a musical motif; the new look did not carry over to the multiplex channels. Starz! also introduced the "InfoBar", a lower-third banner graphic that appears on-screen during promotional breaks and during the end credits of films seen on the channel, originally purposed to promote upcoming programs.


title: Starz

text: This logo was abandoned for an abstract star shooting upwards and a Helvetica Neue wordmark in March 2005 as part of a major rebrand of the network that included a blue colored gel standardized graphics package with modifications (different colors such as grey, red, green, purple, and orange) for each multiplex channel; the fanfare from the previous graphics package was also reorchestrated by Mixology Post. The "InfoBar" also began to be used to promote events on the other Starz networks and to provide entertainment news headlines supplied by "Variety" (a similar version was adopted for use by the Encore networks). That year, Starz began branding its feature film content with an opaque logo bug appearing on the lower-right corner of the screen for two minutes each half-hour, though the 2005 logo bug for Starz channels appears for the rest of the movie's run in Summer 2007, along with Encore and Movieplex channels until Starz reverted them back to 2 minutes for their logo bug during the April 2008 rebrand, except for Encore, Movieplex, and Starz Cinema; the addition of the on-screen logos was cited by former Starz president Tom Southwick due to a large number of subscribers not knowing which of the channels they were watching when they tuned in, particularly if started viewing one of the channels after the start of a film.


title: Starz

text: A new logo was introduced in April 2008, with lowercase "starz" typing featuring an asteroid-shaped star inserted between the "a" and "r"; the coloring of the logo was modified to an orange/gold rendering in April 2011. The channel replaced the opaque on-screen logos with a bright white logo bug on all channels and a bright orange bug for Starz HD as of April 7, 2008 and Starz Kids & Family's HD simulcast feed in July 2011. After the 2011 logo rebrand, the bright white version of the 2008 logo for Starz channels stayed on screen for the second time until mid-2013 that it will reverted to two-minute version, along with Encore channels. After the current logo's introduction, the "InfoBar" began to once again serve only to promote programming on the main Starz channel, while it serves mainly as a network ID on some of its multiplex channels.


title: Starz

text: In 2016, Starz redesigned its logo again; the current logo is the word "STARZ" in bold white capital letters against a black background.


title: Starz

text: In 2022, following the rebrand of Lionsgate+, Starz got a new brand and is colored in blue (yellow for gradient), akin to Lionsgate's main color.


title: Porcelain

text: Porcelain () is a ceramic material made by heating substances, generally including materials such as kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises mainly from vitrification and formation of the mineral mullite within the body at these high temperatures. Though definitions vary, porcelain can be divided into three main categories: hard-paste, soft-paste, and bone china. The category that an object belongs to depends on the composition of the paste used to make the body of the porcelain object and the firing conditions.


title: Porcelain

text: Porcelain slowly evolved in China and was finally achieved (depending on the definition used) at some point about 2,000 to 1,200 years ago; it slowly spread to other East Asian countries, then to Europe, and eventually to the rest of the world. Its manufacturing process is more demanding than that for earthenware and stoneware, the two other main types of pottery, and it has usually been regarded as the most prestigious type of pottery for its delicacy, strength, and its white colour. It combines well with both glazes and paint, and can be modelled very well, allowing a huge range of decorative treatments in tableware, vessels, and figurines. It also has many uses in technology and industry.


title: Porcelain

text: The European name, porcelain in English, comes from the old Italian "porcellana" (cowrie shell) because of its resemblance to the surface of the shell. Porcelain is also referred to as china or fine china in some English-speaking countries, as it was first seen in imports from China during the 17th century. Properties associated with porcelain include low permeability and elasticity; considerable strength, hardness, whiteness, translucency, and resonance; and a high resistance to corrosive chemicals and thermal shock.


title: Porcelain

text: Porcelain has been described as being "completely vitrified, hard, impermeable (even before glazing), white or artificially coloured, translucent (except when of considerable thickness), and resonant". However, the term "porcelain" lacks a universal definition and has "been applied in an unsystematic fashion to substances of diverse kinds which have only certain surface-qualities in common".


title: Porcelain

text: Traditionally, East Asia only classifies pottery into low-fired wares (earthenware) and high-fired wares (often translated as porcelain), the latter also including what Europeans call "stoneware", which is high-fired but not generally white or translucent. Terms such as "proto-porcelain", "porcellaneous" or "near-porcelain" may be used in cases where the ceramic body approaches whiteness and translucency.


title: Porcelain

text: Hard-paste porcelain was invented in China, and it was also used in Japanese porcelain, and most of the finest quality porcelain wares are in this material. The earliest European porcelains were produced at the Meissen factory in the early 18th century; they were formed from a paste composed of kaolin and alabaster and fired at temperatures up to in a wood-fired kiln, producing a porcelain of great hardness, translucency, and strength. Later, the composition of the Meissen hard paste was changed and the alabaster was replaced by feldspar and quartz, allowing the pieces to be fired at lower temperatures. Kaolinite, feldspar and quartz (or other forms of silica) continue to constitute the basic ingredients for most continental European hard-paste porcelains.


title: Porcelain

text: Soft-paste porcelains date back from early attempts by European potters to replicate Chinese porcelain by using mixtures of clay and frit. Soapstone and lime are known to have been included in these compositions. These wares were not yet actual porcelain wares as they were neither hard nor vitrified by firing kaolin clay at high temperatures. As these early formulations suffered from high pyroplastic deformation, or slumping in the kiln at high temperatures, they were uneconomic to produce and of low quality.


title: Porcelain

text: Formulations were later developed based on kaolin with quartz, feldspars, nepheline syenite or other feldspathic rocks. These are technically superior, and continue to be produced. Soft-paste porcelains are fired at lower temperatures than hard-paste porcelain, therefore these wares are generally less hard than hard-paste porcelains.


title: Porcelain

text: Although originally developed in England in 1748 to compete with imported porcelain, bone china is now made worldwide, including China. The English had read the letters of Jesuit missionary François Xavier d'Entrecolles, which described Chinese porcelain manufacturing secrets in detail. One writer has speculated that a misunderstanding of the text could possibly have been responsible for the first attempts to use bone-ash as an ingredient of English porcelain, although this is not supported by modern researchers and historians.


title: Porcelain

text: Traditionally, English bone china was made from two parts of bone ash, one part of kaolin and one part china stone, although the latter has largely been replaced by feldspars from non-UK sources.


title: Porcelain

text: Kaolin is the primary material from which porcelain is made, even though clay minerals might account for only a small proportion of the whole. The word "paste" is an old term for both unfired and fired materials. A more common terminology for the unfired material is "body"; for example, when buying materials a potter might order an amount of porcelain body from a vendor.


title: Porcelain

text: The composition of porcelain is highly variable, but the clay mineral kaolinite is often a raw material. Other raw materials can include feldspar, ball clay, glass, bone ash, steatite, quartz, petuntse and alabaster.


title: Porcelain

text: The clays used are often described as being long or short, depending on their plasticity. Long clays are cohesive (sticky) and have high plasticity; short clays are less cohesive and have lower plasticity. In soil mechanics, plasticity is determined by measuring the increase in content of water required to change a clay from a solid state bordering on the plastic, to a plastic state bordering on the liquid, though the term is also used less formally to describe the ease with which a clay may be worked.


title: Porcelain

text: Clays used for porcelain are generally of lower plasticity and are shorter than many other pottery clays. They wet very quickly, meaning that small changes in the content of water can produce large changes in workability. Thus, the range of water content within which these clays can be worked is very narrow and consequently must be carefully controlled.


title: Porcelain

text: Porcelain can be made using all the shaping techniques for pottery. It was originally typically made on the potter's wheel, though moulds were also used from early on. Slipcasting has been the most common commercial method in recent times.


title: Porcelain

text: Biscuit porcelain is unglazed porcelain treated as a finished product, mostly for figures and sculpture. Unlike their lower-fired counterparts, porcelain wares do not need glazing to render them impermeable to liquids and for the most part are glazed for decorative purposes and to make them resistant to dirt and staining. Many types of glaze, such as the iron-containing glaze used on the celadon wares of Longquan, were designed specifically for their striking effects on porcelain.


title: Porcelain

text: Porcelain often receives underglaze decoration using pigments that include cobalt oxide and copper, or overglaze enamels, allowing a wider range of colours. Like many earlier wares, modern porcelains are often biscuit-fired at around , coated with glaze and then sent for a second glaze-firing at a temperature of about or greater. Another early method is "once-fired", where the glaze is applied to the unfired body and the two fired together in a single operation.


title: Porcelain

text: In this process, "green" (unfired) ceramic wares are heated to high temperatures in a kiln to permanently set their shapes, vitrify the body and the glaze. Porcelain is fired at a higher temperature than earthenware so that the body can vitrify and become non-porous. Many types of porcelain in the past have been fired twice or even three times, to allow decoration using less robust pigments in overglaze enamel.


title: Porcelain

text: Porcelain was invented in China over a centuries-long development period beginning with "proto-porcelain" wares dating from the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 B.C.E). By the time of the Eastern Han dynasty (CE 25–220) these early glazed ceramic wares had developed into porcelain, which Chinese defined as high-fired ware. By the late Sui dynasty (581–618 CE) and early Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), the now-standard requirements of whiteness and translucency had been achieved, in types such as Ding ware. The wares were already exported to the Islamic world, where they were highly prized.


title: Porcelain

text: Eventually, porcelain and the expertise required to create it began to spread into other areas of East Asia. During the Song dynasty (960–1279 AD), artistry and production had reached new heights. The manufacture of porcelain became highly organised, and the dragon kilns excavated from this period could fire as many as 25,000 pieces at a time, and over 100,000 by the end of the period. While Xing ware is regarded as among the greatest of the Tang dynasty porcelain, Ding ware became the premier porcelain of the Song dynasty. By the Ming dynasty, production of the finest wares for the court was concentrated in a single city, and Jingdezhen porcelain, originally owned by the imperial government, remains the centre of Chinese porcelain production.


title: Porcelain

text: By the time of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644 AD), porcelain wares were being exported to Asia and Europe. Some of the most well-known Chinese porcelain art styles arrived in Europe during this era, such as the coveted "blue-and-white" wares. The Ming dynasty controlled much of the porcelain trade, which was expanded to Asia, Africa and Europe via the Silk Road. In 1517, Portuguese merchants began direct trade by sea with the Ming dynasty, and in 1598, Dutch merchants followed.


title: Porcelain

text: Some porcelains were more highly valued than others in imperial China. The most valued types can be identified by their association with the court, either as tribute offerings, or as products of kilns under imperial supervision. Since the Yuan dynasty, the largest and best centre of production has made Jingdezhen porcelain. During the Ming dynasty, Jingdezhen porcelain become a source of imperial pride. The Yongle emperor erected a white porcelain brick-faced pagoda at Nanjing, and an exceptionally smoothly glazed type of white porcelain is peculiar to his reign. Jingdezhen porcelain's fame came to a peak during the Qing dynasty.


title: Porcelain

text: Although the Japanese elite were keen importers of Chinese porcelain from early on, they were not able to make their own until the arrival of Korean potters that were taken captive during the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598). They brought an improved type of kiln, and one of them spotted a source of porcelain clay near Arita, and before long several kilns had started in the region. At first their wares were similar to the cheaper and cruder Chinese porcelains with underglaze blue decoration that were already widely sold in Japan; this style was to continue for cheaper everyday wares until the 20th century.


title: Porcelain

text: Exports to Europe began around 1660, through the Chinese and the Dutch East India Company, the only Europeans allowed a trading presence. Chinese exports had been seriously disrupted by civil wars as the Ming dynasty fell apart, and the Japanese exports increased rapidly to fill the gap. At first the wares used European shapes and mostly Chinese decoration, as the Chinese had done, but gradually original Japanese styles developed.


title: Porcelain

text: Nabeshima ware was produced in kilns owned by the families of feudal lords, and were decorated in the Japanese tradition, much of it related to textile design. This was not initially exported, but used for gifts to other aristocratic families. Imari ware and Kakiemon are broad terms for styles of export porcelain with overglaze "enamelled" decoration begun in the early period, both with many sub-types.


title: Porcelain

text: A great range of styles and manufacturing centres were in use by the start of the 19th century, and as Japan opened to trade in the second half, exports expanded hugely and quality generally declined. Much traditional porcelain continues to replicate older methods of production and styles, and there are several modern industrial manufacturers. By the early 1900s, Filipino porcelain artisans working in Japanese porcelain centres for much of their lives, later on introduced the craft into the native population in the Philippines, although oral literature from Cebu in the central Philippines have noted that porcelain were already being produced by the natives locally during the time of Cebu's early rulers, prior to the arrival of colonizers in the 16th century.


title: Porcelain

text: Imported Chinese porcelains were held in such great esteem in Europe that in English "china" became a commonly–used synonym for the Italian-derived "porcelain". The first mention of porcelain in Europe is in "Il Milione" by Marco Polo in the 13th century. Apart from copying Chinese porcelain in "faience" (tin glazed earthenware), the soft-paste Medici porcelain in 16th-century Florence was the first real European attempt to reproduce it, with little success.


title: Porcelain

text: Early in the 16th century, Portuguese traders returned home with samples of kaolin, which they discovered in China to be essential in the production of porcelain wares. However, the Chinese techniques and composition used to manufacture porcelain were not yet fully understood. Countless experiments to produce porcelain had unpredictable results and met with failure. In the German state of Saxony, the search concluded in 1708 when Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus produced a hard, white, translucent type of porcelain specimen with a combination of ingredients, including kaolin and alabaster, mined from a Saxon mine in Colditz. It was a closely guarded trade secret of the Saxon enterprise.


title: Porcelain

text: In 1712, many of the elaborate Chinese porcelain manufacturing secrets were revealed throughout Europe by the French Jesuit father Francois Xavier d'Entrecolles and soon published in the "Lettres édifiantes et curieuses de Chine par des missionnaires jésuites". The secrets, which d'Entrecolles read about and witnessed in China, were now known and began seeing use in Europe.


title: Porcelain

text: Von Tschirnhaus along with Johann Friedrich Böttger were employed by Augustus II, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, who sponsored their work in Dresden and in the town of Meissen. Tschirnhaus had a wide knowledge of science and had been involved in the European quest to perfect porcelain manufacture when, in 1705, Böttger was appointed to assist him in this task. Böttger had originally been trained as a pharmacist; after he turned to alchemical research, he claimed to have known the secret of transmuting dross into gold, which attracted the attention of Augustus. Imprisoned by Augustus as an incentive to hasten his research, Böttger was obliged to work with other alchemists in the futile search for transmutation and was eventually assigned to assist Tschirnhaus. One of the first results of the collaboration between the two was the development of a red stoneware that resembled that of Yixing.


title: Porcelain

text: A workshop note records that the first specimen of hard, white and vitrified European porcelain was produced in 1708. At the time, the research was still being supervised by Tschirnhaus; however, he died in October of that year. It was left to Böttger to report to Augustus in March 1709 that he could make porcelain. For this reason, credit for the European discovery of porcelain is traditionally ascribed to him rather than Tschirnhaus.


title: Porcelain

text: The Meissen factory was established in 1710 after the development of a kiln and a glaze suitable for use with Böttger's porcelain, which required firing at temperatures of up to to achieve translucence. Meissen porcelain was "once-fired", or "green-fired". It was noted for its great resistance to thermal shock; a visitor to the factory in Böttger's time reported having seen a white-hot teapot being removed from the kiln and dropped into cold water without damage. Although widely disbelieved this has been replicated in modern times.


title: Porcelain

text: In 1744, the Elizabeth of Russia signed an agreement to establish the first porcelain manufactory; previously it had to be imported. The technology of making "white gold" was carefully hidden by its creators. Peter the Great had tried to reveal the "big porcelain secret", and sent an agent to the Meissen factory, and finally hired a porcelain master from abroad. This relied on the research of the Russian scientist Dmitry Ivanovich Vinogradov. His development of porcelain manufacturing technology was not based on secrets learned through third parties, but was the result of painstaking work and careful analysis. Thanks to this, by 1760, Imperial Porcelain Factory, Saint Petersburg became a major European factories producing tableware, and later porcelain figurines. Eventually other factories opened: Gardner porcelain, Dulyovo (1832), Kuznetsovsky porcelain, Popovsky porcelain, and Gzhel.


title: Porcelain

text: During the twentieth century, under Soviet governments, ceramics continued to be a popular artform, supported by the state, with an increasingly propagandist role. One artist, who worked at the Baranovsky Porcelain Factory and at the Experimental Ceramic and Artistic Plant in Kyiv, was Oksana Zhnikrup, whose porcelain figures of the ballet and the circus were widely known.


title: Porcelain

text: The pastes produced by combining clay and powdered glass (frit) were called "Frittenporzellan" in Germany and "frita" in Spain. In France they were known as "pâte tendre" and in England as "soft-paste". They appear to have been given this name because they do not easily retain their shape in the wet state, or because they tend to slump in the kiln under high temperature, or because the body and the glaze can be easily scratched.


title: Porcelain

text: Experiments at Rouen produced the earliest soft-paste in France, but the first important French soft-paste porcelain was made at the Saint-Cloud factory before 1702. Soft-paste factories were established with the Chantilly manufactory in 1730 and at Mennecy in 1750. The Vincennes porcelain factory was established in 1740, moving to larger premises at Sèvres in 1756. Vincennes soft-paste was whiter and freer of imperfections than any of its French rivals, which put Vincennes/Sèvres porcelain in the leading position in France and throughout the whole of Europe in the second half of the 18th century.


title: Porcelain

text: Doccia porcelain of Florence was founded in 1735 and remains in production, unlike Capodimonte porcelain which was moved from Naples to Madrid by its royal owner, after producing from 1743 to 1759. After a gap of 15 years Naples porcelain was produced from 1771 to 1806, specializing in Neoclassical styles. All these were very successful, with large outputs of high-quality wares. In and around Venice, Francesco Vezzi was producing hard-paste from around 1720 to 1735; survivals of Vezzi porcelain are very rare, but less so than from the Hewelke factory, which only lasted from 1758 to 1763. The soft-paste Cozzi factory fared better, lasting from 1764 to 1812. The Le Nove factory produced from about 1752 to 1773, then was revived from 1781 to 1802.


title: Porcelain

text: The first soft-paste in England was demonstrated by Thomas Briand to the Royal Society in 1742 and is believed to have been based on the Saint-Cloud formula. In 1749, Thomas Frye took out a patent on a porcelain containing bone ash. This was the first bone china, subsequently perfected by Josiah Spode. William Cookworthy discovered deposits of kaolin in Cornwall, and his factory at Plymouth, established in 1768, used kaolin and china stone to make hard-paste porcelain with a body composition similar to that of the Chinese porcelains of the early 18th century. But the great success of English ceramics in the 18th century was based on soft-paste porcelain, and refined earthenwares such as creamware, which could compete with porcelain, and had devastated the faience industries of France and other continental countries by the end of the century. Most English porcelain from the late 18th century to the present is bone china.


title: Porcelain

text: In the twenty-five years after Briand's demonstration, a number of factories were founded in England to make soft-paste tableware and figures:


title: Porcelain

text: Porcelain and other ceramic materials have many applications in engineering, especially ceramic engineering. Porcelain is an excellent insulator for use with high voltages, especially in outdoor applications (see Insulator (electricity)#Material). Examples include: terminals for high-voltage cables, bushings of power transformers, and insulation of high-frequency antennas.


title: Porcelain

text: Porcelain can be used as a building material, usually in the form of tiles or large rectangular panels. Modern porcelain tiles are generally produced by a number of recognised international standards and definitions. Manufacturers are found across the world with Italy being the global leader, producing over 380 million square metres in 2006. Historic examples of rooms decorated entirely in porcelain tiles can be found in several European palaces including ones at Galleria Sabauda in Turin, Museo di Doccia in Sesto Fiorentino, Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, the Royal Palace of Madrid and the nearby Royal Palace of Aranjuez. and the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing.


title: Porcelain

text: More recent noteworthy examples include the Dakin Building in Brisbane, California, and the Gulf Building in Houston, Texas, which when constructed in 1929 had a porcelain logo on its exterior.


title: Porcelain

text: Because of its durability, inability to rust and impermeability, glazed porcelain has been in use for personal hygiene since at least the third quarter of the 17th century. During this period, porcelain chamber pots were commonly found in higher-class European households, and the term "bourdaloue" was used as the name for the pot.


title: Porcelain

text: However bath tubs are not made of porcelain, but of porcelain enamel on a metal base, usually of cast iron. Porcelain enamel is a marketing term used in the US, and is not porcelain but vitreous enamel.


title: Active Directory

text: Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems as a set of processes and services. Initially, Active Directory was used only for centralized domain management. However, Active Directory eventually became an umbrella title for a broad range of directory-based identity-related services.


title: Active Directory

text: A server running the Active Directory Domain Service (AD DS) role is called a domain controller. It authenticates and authorizes all users and computers in a Windows domain type network, assigning and enforcing security policies for all computers, and installing or updating software. For example, when a user logs into a computer that is part of a Windows domain, Active Directory checks the submitted username and password and determines whether the user is a system administrator or normal user. Also, it allows management and storage of information, provides authentication and authorization mechanisms and establishes a framework to deploy other related services: Certificate Services, Active Directory Federation Services, Lightweight Directory Services, and Rights Management Services.


title: Active Directory

text: Active Directory uses Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) versions 2 and 3, Microsoft's version of Kerberos, and DNS.


title: Active Directory

text: Like many information-technology efforts, Active Directory originated out of a democratization of design using Request for Comments (RFCs). The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which oversees the RFC process, has accepted numerous RFCs initiated by widespread participants. For example, LDAP underpins Active Directory. Also, X.500 directories and the Organizational Unit preceded the Active Directory concept that makes use of those methods. The LDAP concept began to emerge even before the founding of Microsoft in April 1975, with RFCs as early as 1971. RFCs contributing to LDAP include RFC 1823 (on the LDAP API, August 1995), RFC 2307, RFC 3062, and RFC 4533.


title: Active Directory

text: Microsoft previewed Active Directory in 1999, released it first with Windows 2000 Server edition, and revised it to extend functionality and improve administration in Windows Server 2003. Active Directory support was also added to Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 via patch, with some features being unsupported. Additional improvements came with subsequent versions of Windows Server. In Windows Server 2008, additional services were added to Active Directory, such as Active Directory Federation Services. The part of the directory in charge of the management of domains, which was previously a core part of the operating system, was renamed Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS) and became a server role like others. "Active Directory" became the umbrella title of a broader range of directory-based services. According to Byron Hynes, everything related to identity was brought under Active Directory's banner.


title: Active Directory

text: Active Directory Services consist of multiple directory services. The best known is Active Directory Domain Services, commonly abbreviated as AD DS or simply AD.


title: Active Directory

text: Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) is the foundation of every Windows domain network. It stores information about members of the domain, including devices and users, verifies their credentials and defines their access rights. The server running this service is called a domain controller. A domain controller is contacted when a user logs into a device, accesses another device across the network or runs a line-of-business Metro-style app sideloaded into a device.


title: Active Directory

text: Other Active Directory services (excluding LDS, as described below) as well as most of Microsoft server technologies rely on or use Domain Services; examples include Group Policy, Encrypting File System, BitLocker, Domain Name Services, Remote Desktop Services, Exchange Server and SharePoint Server.


title: Active Directory

text: The self-managed Active Directory DS must not be confused with managed Azure AD DS, which is a cloud product.


title: Active Directory

text: Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services ("AD LDS"), formerly known as "Active Directory Application Mode" (ADAM), is an implementation of the LDAP protocol for AD DS. AD LDS runs as a service on Windows Server. AD LDS shares the code base with AD DS and provides the same functionality, including an identical API, but does not require the creation of domains or domain controllers. It provides a "Data Store" for the storage of directory data and a "Directory Service" with an LDAP "Directory Service Interface". Unlike AD DS, however, multiple AD LDS instances can run on the same server.


title: Active Directory

text: Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) establishes an on-premises public key infrastructure. It can create, validate, revoke and perform other similar actions, public key certificates for internal uses of an organization. These certificates can be used to encrypt files (when used with Encrypting File System), emails (per S/MIME standard), and network traffic (when used by virtual private networks, Transport Layer Security protocol or IPSec protocol).


title: Active Directory

text: Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) is a single sign-on service. With an AD FS infrastructure in place, users may use several web-based services (e.g. internet forum, blog, online shopping, webmail) or network resources using only one set of credentials stored at a central location, as opposed to having to be granted a dedicated set of credentials for each service. AD FS uses many popular open standards to pass token credentials such as SAML, OAuth or OpenID Connect. AD FS supports encryption and signing of SAML assertions. AD FS's purpose is an extension of that of AD DS: The latter enables users to authenticate with and use the devices that are part of the same network, using one set of credentials. The former enables them to use the same set of credentials in a different network.


title: Active Directory

text: Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS, known as Rights Management Services or RMS before Windows Server 2008) is a server software for information rights management shipped with Windows Server. It uses encryption and a form of selective functionality denial for limiting access to documents such as corporate e-mails, Microsoft Word documents, and web pages, and the operations authorized users can perform on them. These operations can include viewing, editing, copying, saving as or printing for example. IT administrators can create pre-set templates for the convenience of the end user if required. However, end users can still define who can access the content in question and set what they can do.


title: Active Directory

text: As a directory service, an Active Directory instance consists of a database and corresponding executable code responsible for servicing requests and maintaining the database. The executable part, known as Directory System Agent, is a collection of Windows services and processes that run on Windows 2000 and later. Objects in Active Directory databases can be accessed via LDAP, ADSI (a component object model interface), messaging API and Security Accounts Manager services.


title: Active Directory

text: Active Directory structures are arrangements of information about objects. The objects fall into two broad categories: resources (e.g., printers) and security principals (user or computer accounts and groups). Security principals are assigned unique security identifiers (SIDs).


title: Active Directory

text: Each object represents a single entity—whether a user, a computer, a printer, or a group—and its attributes. Certain objects can contain other objects. An object is uniquely identified by its name and has a set of attributes—the characteristics and information that the object represents— defined by a schema, which also determines the kinds of objects that can be stored in the Active Directory.


title: Active Directory

text: The schema object lets administrators extend or modify the schema when necessary. However, because each schema object is integral to the definition of Active Directory objects, deactivating or changing these objects can fundamentally change or disrupt a deployment. Schema changes automatically propagate throughout the system. Once created, an object can only be deactivated—not deleted. Changing the schema usually requires planning.


title: Active Directory

text: The Active Directory framework that holds the objects can be viewed at a number of levels. The forest, tree, and domain are the logical divisions in an Active Directory network.


title: Active Directory

text: Within a deployment, objects are grouped into domains. The objects for a single domain are stored in a single database (which can be replicated). Domains are identified by their DNS name structure, the namespace.


title: Active Directory

text: A domain is defined as a logical group of network objects (computers, users, devices) that share the same Active Directory database.


title: Active Directory

text: A tree is a collection of one or more domains and domain trees in a contiguous namespace and is linked in a transitive trust hierarchy.


title: Active Directory

text: At the top of the structure is the "forest." A forest is a collection of trees that share a common global catalog, directory schema, logical structure, and directory configuration. The forest represents the security boundary within which users, computers, groups, and other objects are accessible.


title: Active Directory

text: The objects held within a domain can be grouped into organizational units (OUs). OUs can provide hierarchy to a domain, ease its administration, and can resemble the organization's structure in managerial or geographical terms. OUs can contain other OUs—domains are containers in this sense. Microsoft recommends using OUs rather than domains for structure and simplifying the implementation of policies and administration. The OU is the recommended level at which to apply group policies, which are Active Directory objects formally named group policy objects (GPOs), although policies can also be applied to domains or sites (see below). The OU is the level at which administrative powers are commonly delegated, but delegation can be performed on individual objects or attributes as well.


title: Active Directory

text: Organizational units do not each have a separate namespace. As a consequence, for compatibility with Legacy NetBios implementations, user accounts with an identical sAMAccountName are not allowed within the same domain even if the accounts objects are in separate OUs. This is because sAMAccountName, a user object attribute, must be unique within the domain. However, two users in different OUs can have the same common name (CN), the name under which they are stored in the directory itself such as "fred.staff-ou.domain" and "fred.student-ou.domain", where "staff-ou" and "student-ou" are the OUs.


title: Active Directory

text: In general, the reason for this lack of allowance for duplicate names through hierarchical directory placement is that Microsoft primarily relies on the principles of NetBIOS, which is a flat-namespace method of network object management that, for Microsoft software, goes all the way back to Windows NT 3.1 and MS-DOS LAN Manager. Allowing for duplication of object names in the directory, or completely removing the use of NetBIOS names, would prevent backward compatibility with legacy software and equipment. However, disallowing duplicate object names in this way is a violation of the LDAP RFCs on which Active Directory is supposedly based.


title: Active Directory

text: As the number of users in a domain increases, conventions such as "first initial, middle initial, last name" (Western order) or the reverse (Eastern order) fail for common family names like "Li" (李), "Smith" or "Garcia". Workarounds include adding a digit to the end of the username. Alternatives include creating a separate ID system of unique employee/student ID numbers to use as account names in place of actual users' names and allowing users to nominate their preferred word sequence within an acceptable use policy.


title: Active Directory

text: Because duplicate usernames cannot exist within a domain, account name generation poses a significant challenge for large organizations that cannot be easily subdivided into separate domains, such as students in a public school system or university who must be able to use any computer across the network.


title: Active Directory

text: In Microsoft's Active Directory, OUs do not confer access permissions, and objects placed within OUs are not automatically assigned access privileges based on their containing OU. This is a design limitation specific to Active Directory. Other competing directories such as Novell NDS can assign access privileges through object placement within an OU.


title: Active Directory

text: Active Directory requires a separate step for an administrator to assign an object in an OU as a member of a group also within that OU. Relying on OU location alone to determine access permissions is unreliable, because the object may not have been assigned to the group object for that OU.


title: Active Directory

text: A common workaround for an Active Directory administrator is to write a custom PowerShell or Visual Basic script to automatically create and maintain a "user group" for each OU in their directory. The scripts are run periodically to update the group to match the OU's account membership but are unable to instantly update the security groups anytime the directory changes, as occurs in competing directories where security is directly implemented into the directory itself. Such groups are known as "shadow groups". Once created, these shadow groups are selectable in place of the OU in the administrative tools.


title: Active Directory

text: Microsoft refers to shadow groups in the Server 2008 Reference documentation but does not explain how to create them. There are no built-in server methods or console snap-ins for managing shadow groups.


title: Active Directory

text: The division of an organization's information infrastructure into a hierarchy of one or more domains and top-level OUs is a key decision. Common models are by business unit, by geographical location, by IT Service, or by object type and hybrids of these. OUs should be structured primarily to facilitate administrative delegation, and secondarily, to facilitate group policy application. Although OUs form an administrative boundary, the only true security boundary is the forest itself and an administrator of any domain in the forest must be trusted across all domains in the forest.


title: Active Directory

text: The Active Directory database is organized in "partitions", each holding specific object types and following a specific replication pattern. Microsoft often refers to these partitions as 'naming contexts'. The 'Schema' partition contains the definition of object classes and attributes within the Forest. The 'Configuration' partition contains information on the physical structure and configuration of the forest (such as the site topology). Both replicate to all domains in the Forest. The 'Domain' partition holds all objects created in that domain and replicates only within its domain.


title: Active Directory

text: "Sites" are physical (rather than logical) groupings defined by one or more IP subnets. AD also holds the definitions of connections, distinguishing low-speed (e.g., WAN, VPN) from high-speed (e.g., LAN) links. Site definitions are independent of the domain and OU structure and are common across the forest. Sites are used to control network traffic generated by replication and also to refer clients to the nearest domain controllers (DCs). Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 uses the site topology for mail routing. Policies can also be defined at the site level.


title: Active Directory

text: Physically, the Active Directory information is held on one or more peer domain controllers, replacing the NT PDC/BDC model. Each DC has a copy of the Active Directory. Servers joined to Active Directory that is not domain controllers are called Member Servers. A subset of objects in the domain partition replicate to domain controllers that are configured as global catalogs. Global catalog (GC) servers provide a global listing of all objects in the Forest.


title: Active Directory

text: Global Catalog servers replicate to themselves all objects from all domains and, hence, provide a global listing of objects in the forest. However, to minimize replication traffic and keep the GC's database small, only selected attributes of each object are replicated. This is called the "partial attribute set" (PAS). The PAS can be modified by modifying the schema and marking attributes for replication to the GC. Earlier versions of Windows used NetBIOS to communicate. Active Directory is fully integrated with DNS and requires TCP/IP—DNS. To be fully functional, the DNS server must support SRV resource records, also known as service records.


title: Active Directory

text: Active Directory synchronizes changes using "multi-master replication". Replication by default is 'pull' rather than 'push', meaning that replicas pull changes from the server where the change was effected. The "Knowledge Consistency Checker" (KCC) creates a replication topology of "site links" using the defined "sites" to manage traffic. Intra-site replication is frequent and automatic as a result of change notification, which triggers peers to begin a pull replication cycle. Inter-site replication intervals are typically less frequent and do not use change notification by default, although this is configurable and can be made identical to intra-site replication.


title: Active Directory

text: Each link can have a 'cost' (e.g., DS3, T1, ISDN, etc.) and the KCC alters the site link topology accordingly. Replication may occur transitively through several site links on same-protocol "site link bridges", if the cost is low, although KCC automatically costs a direct site-to-site link lower than transitive connections. Site-to-site replication can be configured to occur between a "bridgehead server" in each site, which then replicates the changes to other DCs within the site. Replication for Active Directory zones is automatically configured when DNS is activated in the domain-based by the site.


title: Active Directory

text: Replication of Active Directory uses Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) over IP (RPC/IP). Between Sites, SMTP can be used for replication, but only for changes in the Schema, Configuration, or Partial Attribute Set (Global Catalog) GCs. SMTP cannot be used for replicating the default Domain partition.


title: Active Directory

text: In general, a network utilizing Active Directory has more than one licensed Windows server computer. Backup and restore of Active Directory is possible for a network with a single domain controller, but Microsoft recommends more than one domain controller to provide automatic failover protection of the directory. Domain controllers are also ideally single-purpose for directory operations only, and should not run any other software or role.


title: Active Directory

text: Certain Microsoft products such as SQL Server and Exchange can interfere with the operation of a domain controller, necessitating isolation of these products on additional Windows servers. Combining them can make configuration or troubleshooting of either the domain controller or the other installed software more difficult. A business intending to implement Active Directory is therefore recommended to purchase a number of Windows server licenses, to provide for at least two separate domain controllers, and optionally, additional domain controllers for performance or redundancy, a separate file server, a separate Exchange server, a separate SQL Server, and so forth to support the various server roles.


title: Active Directory

text: Physical hardware costs for the many separate servers can be reduced through the use of virtualization, although for proper failover protection, Microsoft recommends not running multiple virtualized domain controllers on the same physical hardware.


title: Active Directory

text: The Active-Directory database, the "directory store", in Windows 2000 Server uses the JET Blue-based Extensible Storage Engine (ESE98) and is limited to 16 terabytes and 2 billion objects (but only 1 billion security principals) in each domain controller's database. Microsoft has created NTDS databases with more than 2 billion objects. (NT4's Security Account Manager could support no more than 40,000 objects). Called NTDS.DIT, it has two main tables: the "data table" and the "link table". Windows Server 2003 added a third main table for security descriptor single instancing.


title: Active Directory

text: Programs may access the features of Active Directory via the COM interfaces provided by "Active Directory Service Interfaces".


title: Active Directory

text: Trusts inside a forest are automatically created when domains are created. The forest sets the default boundaries of trust, and implicit, transitive trust is automatic for all domains within a forest.


title: Active Directory

text: These management tools may not provide enough functionality for efficient workflow in large environments. Some third-party tools extend the administration and management capabilities. They provide essential features for a more convenient administration process, such as automation, reports, integration with other services, etc.


title: Active Directory

text: Varying levels of interoperability with Active Directory can be achieved on most Unix-like operating systems (including Unix, Linux, Mac OS X or Java and Unix-based programs) through standards-compliant LDAP clients, but these systems usually do not interpret many attributes associated with Windows components, such as Group Policy and support for one-way trusts.


title: Active Directory

text: The schema additions shipped with Windows Server 2003 R2 include attributes that map closely enough to RFC 2307 to be generally usable. The reference implementation of RFC 2307, nss_ldap and pam_ldap provided by PADL.com, support these attributes directly. The default schema for group membership complies with RFC 2307bis (proposed). Windows Server 2003 R2 includes a Microsoft Management Console snap-in that creates and edits the attributes.


title: Active Directory

text: An alternative option is to use another directory service as non-Windows clients authenticate to this while Windows Clients authenticate to Active Directory. Non-Windows clients include 389 Directory Server (formerly Fedora Directory Server, FDS), ViewDS v7.2 XML Enabled Directory, and Sun Microsystems Sun Java System Directory Server. The latter two are both able to perform two-way synchronization with Active Directory and thus provide a "deflected" integration.


title: Active Directory

text: Another option is to use OpenLDAP with its "translucent" overlay, which can extend entries in any remote LDAP server with additional attributes stored in a local database. Clients pointed at the local database see entries containing both the remote and local attributes, while the remote database remains completely untouched.


title: Active Directory

text: Administration (querying, modifying, and monitoring) of Active Directory can be achieved via many scripting languages, including PowerShell, VBScript, JScript/JavaScript, Perl, Python, and Ruby. Free and non-free Active Directory administration tools can help to simplify and possibly automate Active Directory management tasks.


title: Aer Lingus

text: Aer Lingus ( ; an anglicisation of the Irish , meaning "air fleet" compare Welsh 'llynges awyr') is the flag carrier of Ireland. Founded by the Irish Government, it was privatised between 2006 and 2015 and it is now a wholly owned subsidiary of International Airlines Group (IAG). The airline's head office is on the grounds of Dublin Airport in Cloghran, County Dublin.


title: Aer Lingus

text: Formed in 1936, Aer Lingus is a former member of the Oneworld airline alliance, which it left on 31 March 2007. After the takeover by IAG, it was expected that Aer Lingus would re-enter Oneworld, however, at a press briefing on 15 November 2017 the airline's then CEO Stephen Kavanagh stated that the airline has "no plans to join Oneworld". The airline has codeshares with Oneworld, Star Alliance and SkyTeam members, as well as interline agreements with Etihad Airways, JetBlue Airways and United Airlines. Aer Lingus has a hybrid business model, operating a mixed fare service on its European routes and full service, two-class flights on transatlantic routes.


title: Aer Lingus

text: Ryanair owned over 29% of Aer Lingus stock and the Irish state owned over 25% before being bought out by IAG in 2015. The state had previously held an 85% shareholding until the Government's decision to float the company on the Dublin and London stock exchanges on 2 October 2006. The principal group companies include Aer Lingus Limited, Aer Lingus Beachey Limited, Aer Lingus (Ireland) Limited and Dirnan Insurance Company Limited, all of which are wholly owned.


title: Aer Lingus

text: On 26 May 2015, after months of negotiations on a possible IAG takeover, the Irish government agreed to sell its 25% stake in the company. Ryanair retained a 30% stake in Aer Lingus which it agreed to sell to IAG on 10 July 2015 for €2.55 per share. In August 2015, Aer Lingus' shareholders officially accepted IAG's takeover offer. IAG subsequently assumed control of Aer Lingus on 2 September 2015.


title: Aer Lingus

text: Aer Lingus was founded on 15 April 1936, with a capital of £100,000. Its first chairman was Seán Ó hUadhaigh. Pending legislation for Government investment through a parent company, Aer Lingus was associated with Blackpool and West Coast Air Services which advanced the money for the first aircraft, and operated with Aer Lingus under the common title "Irish Sea Airways". Aer Lingus Teoranta was registered as an airline on 22 May 1936. The name "Aer Lingus" was proposed by Richard F O'Connor, who was County Cork Surveyor, as well as an aviation enthusiast.


title: Aer Lingus

text: On 27 May 1936, five days after being registered as an airline, its first service began between Baldonnel Airfield in Dublin and Bristol (Whitchurch) Airport, the United Kingdom, using a six-seater de Havilland DH.84 Dragon biplane (registration EI-ABI), named "Iolar" (Eagle).


title: Aer Lingus

text: Later that year, the airline acquired its second aircraft, a four-engined biplane de Havilland DH.86 Express named "Éire", with a capacity of 14 passengers. This aircraft provided the first air link between Dublin and London by extending the Bristol service to Croydon. At the same time, the DH.84 Dragon was used to inaugurate an Aer Lingus service on the Dublin-Liverpool route.


title: Aer Lingus

text: The airline was established as the national carrier under the Air Navigation and Transport Act (1936). In 1937, the Irish government created Aer Rianta (now called Dublin Airport Authority), a company to assume financial responsibility for the new airline and the entire country's civil aviation infrastructure. In April 1937, Aer Lingus became wholly owned by the Irish government via Aer Rianta.


title: Aer Lingus

text: The airline's first General Manager was Dr J.F. (Jeremiah known as 'Jerry') Dempsey, a chartered accountant, who joined the company on secondment from Kennedy Crowley & Co (predecessor to KPMG) as Company Secretary in 1936 (aged 30) and was appointed to the role of General Manager in 1937. He retired 30 years later in 1967 at the age of 60.


title: Aer Lingus

text: In 1938, a de Havilland DH.89 Dragon Rapide replaced "Iolar", and the company purchased a second DH.86B. Two Lockheed 14s arrived in 1939, Aer Lingus' first all-metal aircraft.


title: Aer Lingus

text: In January 1940, a new airport opened in the Dublin suburb of Collinstown and Aer Lingus moved its operations there. It purchased a new DC-3 and inaugurated new services to Liverpool and an internal service to Shannon. The airline's services were curtailed during World War II with the sole route being to Liverpool or Barton Aerodrome Manchester depending on the fluctuating security situation.


title: Aer Lingus

text: On 9 November 1945, regular services were resumed with an inaugural flight to London. From this point Aer Lingus aircraft, initially mostly Douglas DC-3s, were painted in a silver and green livery. The airline introduced its first flight attendants.


title: Aer Lingus

text: In 1946, a new Anglo-Irish agreement gave Aer Lingus exclusive UK traffic rights from Ireland in exchange for a 40% holding by British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and British European Airways (BEA). Because of Aer Lingus' growth the airline bought seven new Vickers Viking aircraft in 1947, however, these proved to be uneconomical and were soon sold.


title: Aer Lingus

text: In 1947, Aerlínte Éireann came into existence to operate transatlantic flights to New York City from Ireland. The airline ordered five new Lockheed L-749 Constellations, but a change of government and a financial crisis prevented the service from starting. John A Costello, the incoming Fine Gael Taoiseach (Prime Minister), was not a keen supporter of air travel and thought that flying the Atlantic was too grandiose a scheme for a small airline from a small country like Ireland.


title: Aer Lingus

text: During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Aer Lingus introduced routes to Brussels, Amsterdam via Manchester and to Rome. Because of the expanding route structure, the airline became one of the early purchasers of Vickers Viscount 700s in 1951, which were placed in service in April 1954. In 1952, the airline expanded its all-freight services and acquired a small fleet of Bristol 170 Freighters, which remained in service until 1957.


title: Aer Lingus

text: Prof. Patrick Lynch was appointed the chairman of Aer Lingus and Aer Rianta in 1954 and served in the position until 1975. In 1956, Aer Lingus introduced a new, green-top livery with a white lightning flash down the windows and the Irish flag displayed on the fin.


title: Aer Lingus

text: On 28 April 1958, Aerlínte Éireann operated its first transatlantic service from Shannon to New York. In 1960, Aerlínte Éireann was renamed Aer Lingus.


title: Aer Lingus

text: Aer Lingus bought seven Fokker F27 Friendships, which were delivered between November 1958 and May 1959. These were used in short-haul services to the UK, gradually replacing the Dakotas, until Aer Lingus replaced them in 1966 with secondhand Viscount 800s.


title: Aer Lingus

text: The airline entered the jet age on 14 December 1960 when it received three Boeing 720 for use on the New York route and the newest Aer Lingus destination Boston.


title: Aer Lingus

text: In 1963, Aer Lingus added Aviation Traders Carvairs to the fleet. These aircraft could transport five cars which were loaded into the fuselage through the nose of the aircraft. The Carvair proved to be uneconomical for the airline partly due to the rise of auto ferry services, and the aircraft were used for freight services until disposed of.


title: Aer Lingus

text: The Boeing 720s proved to be a success for the airline on the transatlantic routes. To supplement these, Aer Lingus took delivery of its first larger Boeing 707 in 1964, and the type continued to serve the airline until 1986.


title: Aer Lingus

text: Conversion of the European fleet to jet equipment began in 1965 when the BAC One-Eleven started services on continental Europe. The airline adopted a new livery in the same year, with a large green shamrock on the fin. In 1966, the remainder of the company's shares held by Aer Rianta were transferred to the Minister for Finance.


title: Aer Lingus

text: In 1966, the company added routes to Montreal and Chicago. In 1968, flights from Belfast, in Northern Ireland, to New York City started, however, it was soon suspended due to the beginning of the Troubles. Aer Lingus introduced Boeing 737s to its fleet in 1969 to cope with the high demand for flights between Dublin and London. Later, Aer Lingus extended the 737 flights to all of its European networks.


title: Aer Lingus

text: In 1967, after 30 years of service, General Manager Dr J.F. Dempsey signed the contract for the airline's first two Boeing 747 aircraft before he retired later that year.


title: Aer Lingus

text: On 6 March 1971, Aer Lingus took delivery of the first of two Boeing 747s for use on the transatlantic routes. The company later purchased a third for its fleet but quickly offered it for lease because it was not initially profitable for the company to fly 747s across the Atlantic. In 1974, Aer Lingus unveiled a new livery which eliminated the word "International" and/or "Irish" from the fuselage titles. The livery included two colours of blue and one green, plus the white shamrock on the fin.


title: Aer Lingus

text: In 1977, Aer Lingus recruited its first female pilot, Gráinne Cronin – the airline was the second in Europe (after SAS) to introduce female pilots.


title: Aer Lingus

text: In September 1979, Aer Lingus became the first European airline other than Alitalia to be used by Pope John Paul II, when he flew aboard a specially modified Boeing 747 (EI-ASI or St. Patrick) from Rome to Dublin and later from Shannon to Boston. In the early 1980s, the 707s were phased out.


title: Aer Lingus

text: In 1984, the airline formed a fully owned subsidiary, Aer Lingus Commuter, so that Aer Lingus could fly to larger cities in Ireland and Britain whose flying time from Dublin did not require jet aircraft. These services employed five of the Belfast-built Short 360 after conducting a trial with the Short 330. Around this time Aer Lingus purchased a majority shareholding in the cargo airline Aer Turas, owner of some DC-8 freighter jets.


title: Aer Lingus

text: Between 1987 and 1989, new Boeing 737s arrived to replace the older ones, and six Fokker 50s were added to the "Commuter" fleet. During 1990, after the passage of the deregulation act for the airline industry in Ireland, Aer Lingus reconsidered its operational policies. It retired the BAC One-Elevens and replaced them with five new 737s. In 1991, four Saab 340Bs arrived at the commuter division to replace the Short 360 aircraft. By 1992, Aer Lingus's entire original 737-200 fleet had been replaced and it was now the first carrier in the world operating all three versions of the second-generation 737. These were the −300, −400 and −500 series, although the −300 did not stay long in Aer Lingus service.


title: Aer Lingus

text: In 1994, Aer Lingus started direct services between Dublin and the United States using the Airbus A330 and in May of that year, Aer Lingus operated the first A330-300 ETOPS service over the North Atlantic. This led to the phasing out of the Boeing 747 and the briefly operated Boeing 767-300ER. On 2 October 1995, the Boeing 747 service ceased operations after twenty-five years of service. By that time, over eight million people had travelled across the Atlantic in Aer Lingus Boeing 747s. The late 1990s saw Aer Lingus return to Belfast with service to New York via Shannon. It also added Newark Liberty International Airport as a destination, but discontinued these flights in 2001.


title: Aer Lingus

text: The first Airbus short-haul aircraft arrived in 1998 in the form of the A321, initially to mainly operate the Dublin-Heathrow route. Six were delivered in 1998 and 1999 and three of these continue in service today. The first A320 was delivered in 2000, with three more added to the fleet by 2001.


title: Aer Lingus

text: On 1 February 2001, Aer Lingus Commuter merged back into the mainline operation. The business was severely affected by the 9/11 attacks in the United States. In response, the airline cut staff numbers and destinations and reduced its fleet. As a result, it weathered the storm and returned to profit, largely through lowering the airline's cost base, updating the fleet with modern Airbus equipment and developing new routes to mainland European destinations. Aer Lingus had previously largely neglected mainland Europe in favour of US and British destinations. It positioned itself as competition to the European no-frills airlines while offering intercontinental flights, phased-out Business class travel for short-haul flights, but retained cargo services on a small number of routes.


title: Aer Lingus

text: A large order for A320 aircraft saw deliveries commencing in 2004 and continuing to 2011. The delivery of these aircraft allowed the withdrawal of the Boeing 737. On 29 October 2005, Aer Lingus withdrew its last two 737 aircraft from service, marking the end of Boeing aircraft at Aer Lingus, and the beginning of an all-Airbus fleet.


title: Aer Lingus

text: On 27 October 2005, Aer Lingus announced its first scheduled service to Asia from March 2006 as Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates, where Chief Executive Dermot Mannion was based when at Emirates. Despite the Aer Lingus press release describing it as the first long-haul service outside the United States, there had in fact been a previous service to Montreal from 1966 to 1979. The great circle distance of is comparable to the service to Chicago. At the same time, Mannion linked the funding of new long-haul aircraft to replace the A330 fleet with the privatisation of the airline. The Dubai service ceased in March 2008 as the airline sought to increase its market share in the newly liberalised transatlantic market.


title: Aer Lingus

text: On 6 June 2007, Aer Lingus strengthened its relationship with the European manufacturer by ordering six of the new A350-900 and six A330-300. These were used to expand long-haul operations as well as replace three older models. Deliveries of the A330 began in February 2009. In, 2011 Aer Lingus switched their remaining three A330 orders to A350-900s, with delivery no sooner than 2017. The A350 orders were subsequently assumed by IAG in 2015.


title: Aer Lingus

text: In preparation for the commercial flotation of Aer Lingus on the Dublin stock market, the Irish government agreed to abolish the Shannon Stopover from the end of 2006 in stages.


title: Aer Lingus

text: The company began conditional (or "grey-market") share dealings on 27 September 2006 and was formally admitted to the Official Lists of the Irish Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange on 2 October 2006. At the time of the flotation, the Irish government maintained a 28% shareholding, while employees held 15%. The stock IPO offer price was E2.20.


title: Aer Lingus

text: Aer Lingus withdrew from the Oneworld airline alliance on 31 March 2007, instead, entering into bilateral agreements with airlines including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Delta Air Lines, KLM, and United Airlines. Aer Lingus explained the move stating the carrier was repositioning as a low-cost carrier, which did not fit with Oneworld's pitch to the premium international frequent flyer.