title: Lorenzo Mannino

text: In 1994, Mannino pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and conspiring to murder Francesco Oliveri in 1988, and was sentenced 15 years in prison. He was released in 2004. The 1994 plea followed a 1993 trial in which John Gambino, Joseph Gambino and Matteo Romano were co-defendants, which ended in mistrial in June 1993 when the jury was unable to reach a verdict. Salvatore Gravano testified to the participation of John, Joseph and Mannino in the murder of Oliveri, to a racketeering enterprise and the Gambino crime family's rule against drugs.


title: Lorenzo Mannino

text: According to a 2007 "New York Post" article on the establishment of a "cooperative venture" with FBI agents stationed in Rome and Italian National Police working at the FBI Headquarters in Washington, Mannino once tried to get Frank Sinatra to help crooner Al Martino find work in Las Vegas, and was a "rising crime-family star".


title: Lorenzo Mannino

text: In March 2019, Gambino soldier Paul Semplice, 55, was given a 28-month prison term for running a loan-sharking operation, after pleading guilty in October 2018 to loaning money to a stressed-out business owner and a gambling addict who wound up dying from a stroke. Semplice described beating one victim in a wire-tapped call, and told a cooperating witness during a wiretapped call that Mannino was his supervisor.


title: Brett Anderson

text: Brett Lewis Anderson (born 29 September 1967) is an English singer best known as the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of the band Suede. After Suede disbanded in 2003, he briefly fronted The Tears in 2004, and released four solo albums in which he also played guitar and keyboards. Anderson is known for his distinctive wide-ranging voice, poetic lyrics, energetic and charismatic stage presence and, during Suede's early days, an androgynous appearance. Suede re-formed in 2010; they continue to record and tour. Bassist Mat Osman and Anderson are the remaining original members since the band's inception, and along with drummer Simon Gilbert have appeared on all Suede albums.


title: Brett Anderson

text: Anderson was born and grew up in Lindfield, Sussex, a village north-east of Haywards Heath. His mother was an artist and a dressmaker; his father was a taxi driver whom Anderson described as an "obsessive classical-music fan". He attended Lindfield Junior School, Oathall Comprehensive School and Haywards Heath Sixth-Form College.


title: Brett Anderson

text: In his teens Anderson played guitar for garage bands such as The Pigs and Geoff, the latter featuring future Suede bassist Mat Osman. In the late 1980s, while a student at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, Anderson and Osman formed Suede with Anderson's girlfriend, Justine Frischmann, soon recruiting guitarist Bernard Butler through an advertisement in the "NME". After they had received temporary percussional help from former Smiths drummer Mike Joyce, in 1991 Simon Gilbert joined as their official drummer. It was around this time that Frischmann left Anderson for Blur frontman Damon Albarn, which created an early rift in the burgeoning Britpop scene of the early 1990s. After missing too many rehearsals and flaunting her relationship with Albarn while still living with Anderson, Frischmann was fired from the group, going on to front Elastica.


title: Brett Anderson

text: Even before Suede's first album appeared in stores, Anderson's androgynous style and vague "confessions" about his sexuality stirred controversy in the British music press. His infamous comment that he was "a bisexual man who never had a homosexual experience" was indicative of how he both courted controversy and a sexually ambiguous, alienated audience. In 1993, "Suede" hit number one on the UK charts. Combining Morrissey's homoerotic posturing with David Bowie's glam theatrics, Anderson achieved rapid fame in the UK. America, however, was still spellbound by the grunge revolution and Anderson's high pitched beseeching wail clashed with the raw anger of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder. Furthering complications across the Atlantic, due to a trademark dispute with the American lounge singer Suede, the band were forced to change their name to The London Suede for the American market. Although the departure of songwriting partner Butler in 1994 during the recording of second album "Dog Man Star" (number three on the UK charts) led many to fear Suede's eventual demise, the band continued to release critically and increasingly commercially successful material in the UK, Europe and Asia, such as 1996's critically acclaimed "Coming Up" (another number one for the band). The band went on to release "Head Music" (number one on the UK charts and in several countries) in 1999, but "A New Morning" was a commercial disappointment in 2002. In 2003, following the release of their "Singles" collection, Suede disbanded.


title: Brett Anderson

text: Anderson has commented that the history of Suede is "...ridiculous. It's like Machiavelli rewriting "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". It involves a cast of thousands. It should star Charlton Heston... it's like a pram that's just been pushed down a hill. It's always been fiery and tempestuous and really on the edge and it never stops. I don’t think it ever will." As a solo musician during Suede's career, Anderson collaborated with Stina Nordenstam and his guest vocals can be heard on the album "This Is Stina Nordenstam". He also sang a duet with Jane Birkin in 1995 which appeared in 1998 on Birkin's Best of album. In addition he sang the lyric "You're going to reap just what you sow" in the Children in Need charity single "Perfect Day".


title: Brett Anderson

text: Following persistent rumours, the boss of the band's former label, Nude Records' Saul Galpern, confirmed to the "NME" that Suede would be playing together again. "It's [for] a one-off gig," he explained of the show, which featured the band's second incarnation. The band played London's Royal Albert Hall as part of the 2010 Teenage Cancer Trust shows. Along with this, the band performed warm-up shows at the 100 Club in London and Ritz Ballroom in Manchester.


title: Brett Anderson

text: Because of the huge success of the shows, a new European tour was announced for the summer of 2010 covering two festivals, Skanderborg Festival in Denmark and Parkenfestivalen in Norway. The tour continued in the autumn covering France, The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany and Belgium. A homecoming date at the O2 Arena closed the tour. Further festival dates occurred in 2011, along with UK dates where Suede performed their first three albums in full.


title: Brett Anderson

text: In 2004, Anderson and former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler briefly formed the band The Tears with Will Foster, Makoto Sakamoto and Nathan Fisher and released their debut album "Here Come the Tears," which was met with generally favourable reviews. It was produced by Butler, recorded at 2 kHz Studios and Rak Studios (London) as well as at Butler's home studio ("Bernie's Buttons"), and featured the singles "Refugees" and "Lovers". Following the cancellation of a European tour in support of the album, the band were dropped by Independiente and the project was abandoned.


title: Brett Anderson

text: In May 2006, Anderson announced details of a solo album consisting of 11 tracks, which was released on 26 March 2007. He told "NME" that the title would be "Brett Anderson" since "...that's my name, you see." The accompanying video for Anderson's first single "Love Is Dead" debuted on UK television in February 2007, quickly finding its way to YouTube. "Love Is Dead" made its debut at No. 42 in the UK singles chart, and the album went to No. 54 the following week. The keyboardist-producer on his album is Fred Ball, and former Suede bass player Mat Osman joined the live band on tour.


title: Brett Anderson

text: In May 2008 it was announced that Anderson's second album was to be premiered on 7 July in a special concert at London's Mermaid Theatre. A copy of the album, entitled "Wilderness", was distributed to all ticket buyers, in the form of a USB stick. The album was recorded in only seven days, with most tracks recorded as live takes. He plays the piano and the acoustic guitars, and is accompanied by Amy Langley on cello. One of the songs "Back to You" written with Fred Ball of the Norwegian band Pleasure is a duet with French actress Emmanuelle Seigner. After this album's release, Anderson released his solo album through his own independent label, BA Songs.


title: Brett Anderson

text: Anderson's third album, "Slow Attack" was co-written with Leo Abrahams. On his website, Brett Anderson writes that he tried to use words in a different way, as fragments, and hint of meanings and emotions. The music is more orchestral than "Wilderness" with more instrumentation throughout the album. On tour, he was joined by Jim Dare [Minuteman], Didz Hammond (Dirty Pretty Things), Angie Pollock (Goldfrapp), Sebastian Sternberg (Pleasure, Marina and the Diamonds), Kris Sonne and Amy Langley, thus giving the songs a more art-rock edge.


title: Brett Anderson

text: "Black Rainbows" – Anderson's fourth solo album was released through BA Songs, distributed by EMI Music Service in September 2011. It was preceded by the single "Brittle Heart". It was the second album Anderson had co-written with Leo Abrahams and it saw a return to a simpler more commercial rock format. Anderson stated that he had taken as reference points some of his old favourite records like PIL's "Rise", and Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Juju" while conceiving the songs.


title: Brett Anderson

text: In the early days of Suede's career, Anderson made a comment that he was "a bisexual man who never had a homosexual experience."


title: Brett Anderson

text: The recording of Suede's "Head Music" was plagued with difficulties such as Anderson's addiction to heroin and crack cocaine which showed in his increasingly unpredictable behaviour and gaunt appearance, which contrasted with his previously healthy and androgynous appearance. While Anderson had been taking drugs moderately during Suede's career up to that point, He was addicted for two and a half years, but stopped in late 1999, when somebody very close to him became ill. He has been clean since. Speaking of his addiction, Anderson said, "Anyone who has ever tried crack will know exactly why I took it. It's the scariest drug in the world because the hit you get from it is so, so seductive. I wanted to experience that, and I did – repeatedly."


title: Brett Anderson

text: Anderson was a close friend of Simon Hobart (promoter of Popstarz) and was the DJ at the benefit night held in Hobart's honour after his death.


title: Brett Anderson

text: In 2018, Anderson released an autobiography titled "Coal Black Mornings". The second part of the book, called "Afternoon With The Blinds Drawn" was released a year later.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Cauda equina syndrome (CES) is a condition that occurs when the bundle of nerves below the end of the spinal cord known as the cauda equina is damaged. Signs and symptoms include low back pain, pain that radiates down the leg, numbness around the anus, and loss of bowel or bladder control. Onset may be rapid or gradual.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: The cause is usually a disc herniation in the lower region of the back. Other causes include spinal stenosis, cancer, trauma, epidural abscess, and epidural hematoma. The diagnosis is suspected based on symptoms and confirmed by medical imaging such as MRI or CT scan.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: CES is generally treated surgically via laminectomy. Sudden onset is regarded as a medical emergency requiring prompt surgical decompression, with delay causing permanent loss of function. Permanent bladder problems, sexual dysfunction or numbness may occur despite surgery. A poor outcome occurs in about 20% of people despite treatment. About 1 in 70,000 people is affected every year. It was first described in 1934.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Severe back pain, saddle anesthesia, urinary or fecal incontinence and sexual dysfunction are considered "red flags", i.e. features which require urgent investigation.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: After the conus medullaris (near lumbar vertebral levels 1 (L1) and 2 (L2), occasionally lower), the spinal canal contains a bundle of nerve fibers (the cauda equina or "horse-tail") that branches off the lower end of the spinal cord and contains the nerve roots from L1–L5 and S1–S5. The nerve roots from L4–S4 join in the sacral plexus which affects the sciatic nerve, which travels caudally (toward the feet). Compression, trauma or other damage to this region of the spinal canal can result in cauda equina syndrome.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Direct trauma can also cause cauda equina syndrome. Most common causes include as a complication of lumbar punctures, burst fractures resulting in posterior migration of fragments of the vertebral body, severe disc herniations, spinal anaesthesia involving trauma from catheters and high local anaesthetic concentrations around the cauda equina, penetrating trauma such as knife wounds or ballistic trauma.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: CES can be caused by lumbar spinal stenosis, which is when the diameter of the spinal canal narrows. This could be the result of a degenerative process of the spine (such as osteoarthritis) or a developmental defect which is present at birth. In the most severe cases of spondylolisthesis cauda equina syndrome can result.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Chronic spinal inflammatory conditions such as Paget disease, neurosarcoidosis, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, ankylosing spondylitis, rheumatoid disease of the spine, and chronic tuberculosis can cause it. This is due to the spinal canal narrowing that these kinds of syndromes can produce.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Individuals most at risk for disc herniation are the most likely to develop CES. Race has little influence with the notable exception that African Americans appear slightly less likely to develop CES than other groups. Middle age also appears to be a notable risk factor, as those populations are more likely to develop a herniated disc; heavy lifting can also be inferred as a risk factor for CES.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Diagnosis is first suspected clinically based on history and physical exam and usually confirmed by an MRI scan or CT scan, depending on availability. Bladder scanning and loss of catheter sensation can also be used to evaluate bladder dysfunction in suspected cases of cauda equina syndrome and can aid diagnosis before MRI scanning. Early surgery in acute onset of severe cases has been reported to be important.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Early diagnosis of cauda equina syndrome can allow for preventive treatment. Signs that allow early diagnosis include changes in bowel and bladder function and loss of feeling in groin. Changes in sensation can start as pins and needles leading to numbness. Changes in bladder function may be changes to stream or inability to fully empty the bladder. If a person progresses to full retention intervention is less likely to be successful.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: The management of true cauda equina syndrome frequently involves surgical decompression. When cauda equina syndrome is caused by a herniated disk early surgical decompression is recommended.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Sudden onset cauda equina syndrome is regarded as a medical/surgical emergency. Surgical decompression by means of laminectomy or other approaches may be undertaken within 6, 24 or 48 hours of symptoms developing if a compressive lesion (e.g., ruptured disc, epidural abscess, tumor or hematoma) is demonstrated. Early treatment may significantly improve the chance that long-term neurological damage will be avoided.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Surgery may be required to remove blood, bone fragments, a tumor or tumors, a herniated disc or an abnormal bone growth. If the tumor cannot be removed surgically and is malignant then radiotherapy may be used as an alternative to relieve pressure. Chemotherapy can also be used for spinal neoplasms. If the syndrome is due to an inflammatory condition e.g., ankylosing spondylitis, anti-inflammatory, including steroids can be used as an effective treatment. If a bacterial infection is the cause then an appropriate course of antibiotics can be used to treat it.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Cauda equina syndrome can occur during pregnancy due to lumbar disc herniation. The risk of cauda equina syndrome during pregnancy increases with age of the mother. Surgery can still be performed and pregnancy does not adversely affect treatment. Treatment for those with cauda equina can and should be carried out at any time during pregnancy.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Lifestyle issues may need to be addressed post-treatment. Issues could include the person's need for physiotherapy and occupational therapy due to lower limb dysfunction. Obesity might also need to be tackled.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Rehabilitation of CES depends on the severity of the injury. If permanent damage occurs, then impairment in bladder and bowel control may result. Once surgery is performed, resting is required until the bladder and bowel dysfunction can be assessed. Urinary catheterization may help with bladder control. Gravity and exercise can help control bowel movement (Hodges, 2004). Pelvic floor exercises assist in controlling bowel movements (Pelvic Floor Exercises, 2010). These exercises can be done standing, lying, or on all fours with the knees slightly separated. Full recovery of bowel and bladder control can take as long as two years.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: The prognosis for complete recovery is dependent upon many factors. The most important of these is the severity and duration of compression upon the damaged nerve(s). Generally, the longer the time before intervention to remove the compression causing nerve damage, the greater the damage caused to the nerve(s).


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Damage can be so severe that nerve regrowth is impossible, and the nerve damage will be permanent. In cases where the nerve has been damaged but is still capable of regrowth, recovery time is widely variable. Surgical intervention with decompression of the cauda equina can assist recovery. Delayed or severe nerve damage can mean up to several years' recovery time because nerve growth is exceptionally slow.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Review of the literature indicates that around 50–70% of patients have urinary retention (CES-R) on presentation with 30–50% having an incomplete syndrome (CES-I). The latter group, especially if the history is less than a few days, usually requires emergency MRI to confirm the diagnosis followed by prompt decompression. CES-I with its more favourable prognosis may become CES-R at a later stage.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Various etiologies of CES include fractures, abscesses, hematomas, and any compression of the relevant nerve roots. Injuries to the thoracolumbar spine will not necessarily result in a clinical diagnosis of CES, but in all such cases it is necessary to consider. Few epidemiological studies of CES have been done in the United States, owing to difficulties such as amassing sufficient cases as well as defining the affected population, therefore this is an area deserving of additional scrutiny.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Traumatic spinal cord injuries occur in approximately 40 people per million annually in the United States, resulting from traumas due to motor vehicle accidents, sporting injuries, falls, and other factors. An estimated 10 to 25% of vertebral fractures will result in injury to the spinal cord. Thorough physical examinations are required, as 5 to 15% of trauma patients have fractures that initially go undiagnosed.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: The most frequent injuries of the thoracolumbar region are to the conus medullaris and the cauda equina, particularly between T12 and L2. Of these two syndromes, CES is the more common. CES mainly affects middle-aged individuals, particularly those in their forties and fifties, and presents more often in men. It is not a typical diagnosis, developing in only 4 to 7 out of every 10,000 to 100,000 patients, and is more likely to occur proximally. Disc herniation is reportedly the most common cause of CES, and it is thought that 1 to 2% of all surgical disc herniation cases result in CES.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: CES is often concurrent with congenital or degenerative diseases and represents a high cost of care to those admitted to the hospital for surgery. Hospital stays generally last 4 to 5 days, and cost an average of $100,000 to $150,000. Delays in care for cauda equina results in the English NHS paying about £23 million a year in compensation.


title: Cauda equina syndrome

text: Degenerative lumbosacral stenosis (DLSS), also known as cauda equina syndrome, is a pathologic degeneration in the lumbosacral disk in dogs. DLSS affects the articulation, nerve progression, and tissue and joint connections of the disk. This degeneration causes compressions in soft tissues and nerve root locations in the caudal area of the medulla, causing neuropathic pain in the lumbar vertebrae.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: In mathematics, a (real) interval is a set of real numbers that contains all real numbers lying between any two numbers of the set. For example, the set of numbers satisfying is an interval which contains , , and all numbers in between. Other examples of intervals are the set of numbers such that , the set of all real numbers formula_1, the set of nonnegative real numbers, the set of positive real numbers, the empty set, and any singleton (set of one element).


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: Real intervals play an important role in the theory of integration, because they are the simplest sets whose "length" (or "measure" or "size") is easy to define. The concept of measure can then be extended to more complicated sets of real numbers, leading to the Borel measure and eventually to the Lebesgue measure.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: Intervals are central to interval arithmetic, a general numerical computing technique that automatically provides guaranteed enclosures for arbitrary formulas, even in the presence of uncertainties, mathematical approximations, and arithmetic roundoff.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: Intervals are likewise defined on an arbitrary totally ordered set, such as integers or rational numbers. The notation of integer intervals is considered in the special section below.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: An does not include its endpoints, and is indicated with parentheses. For example, means greater than and less than . This means .


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: A is an interval which includes all its limit points, and is denoted with square brackets. For example, means greater than or equal to and less than or equal to .


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: A includes only one of its endpoints, and is denoted by mixing the notations for open and closed intervals. For example, means greater than and less than or equal to , while means greater than or equal to and less than .


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: A is any set consisting of a single real number (i.e., an interval of the form ). Some authors include the empty set in this definition. A real interval that is neither empty nor degenerate is said to be proper, and has infinitely many elements.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: An interval is said to be left-bounded or right-bounded, if there is some real number that is, respectively, smaller than or larger than all its elements. An interval is said to be bounded, if it is both left- and right-bounded; and is said to be unbounded otherwise. Intervals that are bounded at only one end are said to be half-bounded. The empty set is bounded, and the set of all reals is the only interval that is unbounded at both ends. Bounded intervals are also commonly known as finite intervals.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: Bounded intervals are bounded sets, in the sense that their diameter (which is equal to the absolute difference between the endpoints) is finite. The diameter may be called the length, width, measure, range, or size of the interval. The size of unbounded intervals is usually defined as , and the size of the empty interval may be defined as (or left undefined).


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: The centre (midpoint) of bounded interval with endpoints and is , and its radius is the half-length . These concepts are undefined for empty or unbounded intervals.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: An interval is said to be left-open if and only if it contains no minimum (an element that is smaller than all other elements); right-open if it contains no maximum; and open if it has both properties. The interval , for example, is left-closed and right-open. The empty set and the set of all reals are open intervals, while the set of non-negative reals, is a right-open but not left-open interval. The open intervals are open sets of the real line in its standard topology, and form a base of the open sets.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: An interval is said to be left-closed if it has a minimum element, right-closed if it has a maximum, and simply closed if it has both. These definitions are usually extended to include the empty set and the (left- or right-) unbounded intervals, so that the closed intervals coincide with closed sets in that topology.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: The interior of an interval is the largest open interval that is contained in ; it is also the set of points in which are not endpoints of . The closure of is the smallest closed interval that contains ; which is also the set augmented with its finite endpoints.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: For any set of real numbers, the interval enclosure or interval span of is the unique interval that contains , and does not properly contain any other interval that also contains .


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: An interval is subinterval of interval if is a subset of . An interval is a proper subinterval of if is a proper subset of .


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: The terms segment and interval have been employed in the literature in two essentially opposite ways, resulting in ambiguity when these terms are used. The "Encyclopedia of Mathematics" defines "interval" (without a qualifier) to exclude both endpoints (i.e., open interval) and "segment" to include both endpoints (i.e., closed interval), while Rudin's "Principles of Mathematical Analysis" calls sets of the form ["a", "b"] "intervals" and sets of the form ("a", "b") "segments" throughout. These terms tend to appear in older works; modern texts increasingly favor the term "interval" (qualified by "open", "closed", or "half-open"), regardless of whether endpoints are included.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: The interval of numbers between and , including and , is often denoted . The two numbers are called the "endpoints" of the interval. In countries where numbers are written with a decimal comma, a semicolon may be used as a separator to avoid ambiguity.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: To indicate that one of the endpoints is to be excluded from the set, the corresponding square bracket can be either replaced with a parenthesis, or reversed. Both notations are described in International standard ISO 31-11. Thus, in set builder notation,


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: Each interval , , and represents the empty set, whereas denotes the singleton set . When , all four notations are usually taken to represent the empty set.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: Both notations may overlap with other uses of parentheses and brackets in mathematics. For instance, the notation is often used to denote an ordered pair in set theory, the coordinates of a point or vector in analytic geometry and linear algebra, or (sometimes) a complex number in algebra. That is why Bourbaki introduced the notation to denote the open interval. The notation too is occasionally used for ordered pairs, especially in computer science.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: Some authors such as Yves Tillé use to denote the complement of the interval ; namely, the set of all real numbers that are either less than or equal to , or greater than or equal to .


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: In some contexts, an interval may be defined as a subset of the extended real numbers, the set of all real numbers augmented with and .


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: In this interpretation, the notations  ,  ,  , and are all meaningful and distinct. In particular, denotes the set of all ordinary real numbers, while denotes the extended reals.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: Even in the context of the ordinary reals, one may use an infinite endpoint to indicate that there is no bound in that direction. For example, is the set of positive real numbers, also written as formula_3. The context affects some of the above definitions and terminology. For instance, the interval  = formula_1 is closed in the realm of ordinary reals, but not in the realm of the extended reals.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: When and are integers, the notation ⟦"a, b"⟧, or or or just , is sometimes used to indicate the interval of all "integers" between and included. The notation is used in some programming languages; in Pascal, for example, it is used to formally define a subrange type, most frequently used to specify lower and upper bounds of valid indices of an array.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: An integer interval that has a finite lower or upper endpoint always includes that endpoint. Therefore, the exclusion of endpoints can be explicitly denoted by writing  ,  , or . Alternate-bracket notations like or are rarely used for integer intervals.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: The intervals of real numbers can be classified into the eleven different types listed below, where and are real numbers, and formula_5:


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: The intervals are precisely the connected subsets of formula_1. It follows that the image of an interval by any continuous function is also an interval. This is one formulation of the intermediate value theorem.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: The intervals are also the convex subsets of formula_1. The interval enclosure of a subset formula_19 is also the convex hull of formula_20.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: The intersection of any collection of intervals is always an interval. The union of two intervals is an interval if and only if they have a non-empty intersection or an open end-point of one interval is a closed end-point of the other – e.g., formula_21.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: If formula_1 is viewed as a metric space, its open balls are the open bounded sets , and its closed balls are the closed bounded sets .


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: Any element  of an interval  defines a partition of  into three disjoint intervals , , : respectively, the elements of  that are less than , the singleton formula_23, and the elements that are greater than . The parts and are both non-empty (and have non-empty interiors), if and only if is in the interior of . This is an interval version of the trichotomy principle.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: A "dyadic interval" is a bounded real interval whose endpoints are formula_24 and formula_25, where formula_26 and formula_27 are integers. Depending on the context, either endpoint may or may not be included in the interval.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: Dyadic intervals are relevant to several areas of numerical analysis, including adaptive mesh refinement, multigrid methods and wavelet analysis. Another way to represent such a structure is p-adic analysis (for ).


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: In many contexts, an formula_28-dimensional interval is defined as a subset of formula_29 that is the Cartesian product of formula_28 intervals, formula_31, one on each coordinate axis.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: For formula_32, this can be thought of as region bounded by a square or rectangle, whose sides are parallel to the coordinate axes, depending on whether the width of the intervals are the same or not; likewise, for formula_33, this can be thought of as a region bounded by an axis-aligned cube or a rectangular cuboid.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: In higher dimensions, the Cartesian product of formula_28 intervals is bounded by an n-dimensional hypercube or hyperrectangle.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: A facet of such an interval formula_35 is the result of replacing any non-degenerate interval factor formula_36 by a degenerate interval consisting of a finite endpoint of formula_36. The faces of formula_35 comprise formula_35 itself and all faces of its facets. The corners of formula_35 are the faces that consist of a single point of formula_29.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: Intervals of complex numbers can be defined as regions of the complex plane, either rectangular or circular.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: Intervals can be associated with points of the plane, and hence regions of intervals can be associated with regions of the plane. Generally, an interval in mathematics corresponds to an ordered pair ("x,y") taken from the direct product R × R of real numbers with itself, where it is often assumed that "y" > "x". For purposes of mathematical structure, this restriction is discarded, and "reversed intervals" where "y" − "x" < 0 are allowed. Then, the collection of all intervals ["x,y"] can be identified with the topological ring formed by the direct sum of R with itself, where addition and multiplication are defined component-wise.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: The direct sum algebra formula_42 has two ideals, { ["x",0] : "x" ∈ R } and { [0,"y"] : "y" ∈ R }. The identity element of this algebra is the condensed interval [1,1]. If interval ["x,y"] is not in one of the ideals, then it has multiplicative inverse [1/"x", 1/"y"]. Endowed with the usual topology, the algebra of intervals forms a topological ring. The group of units of this ring consists of four quadrants determined by the axes, or ideals in this case. The identity component of this group is quadrant I.


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: Every interval can be considered a symmetric interval around its midpoint. In a reconfiguration published in 1956 by M Warmus, the axis of "balanced intervals" ["x", −"x"] is used along with the axis of intervals ["x,x"] that reduce to a point. Instead of the direct sum formula_43, the ring of intervals has been identified with the split-complex number plane by M. Warmus and D. H. Lehmer through the identification


title: Interval (mathematics)

text: This linear mapping of the plane, which amounts of a ring isomorphism, provides the plane with a multiplicative structure having some analogies to ordinary complex arithmetic, such as polar decomposition.


title: Copa Sudamericana

text: The CONMEBOL Sudamericana, named as "Copa Sudamericana" (; ), is an annual international club football competition organized by CONMEBOL since 2002. It is the second-most prestigious club competition in South American football. CONCACAF clubs were invited between 2004 and 2008. The CONMEBOL Sudamericana began in 2002, replacing the separate competitions Copa Merconorte and Copa Mercosur (that had replaced Copa CONMEBOL) by a single competition. Since its introduction, the competition has been a pure elimination tournament with the number of rounds and teams varying from year to year.


title: Copa Sudamericana

text: The CONMEBOL Sudamericana is considered a merger of defunct tournaments such as the Copa CONMEBOL, Copa Mercosur and Copa Merconorte. The winner of the Copa Sudamericana becomes eligible to play in the Recopa Sudamericana. They gain entry onto the next edition of the Copa Libertadores, South America's premier club competition, and also contest the J.League Cup / Copa Sudamericana Championship.


title: Copa Sudamericana

text: The reigning champion of the competition is Ecuadorian club Independiente del Valle, who defeated Brazilian club São Paulo in the most recent final.


title: Copa Sudamericana

text: Argentine clubs have accumulated the most victories with nine while containing the largest number of different winning teams, with a total of seven clubs having won the title. The cup has been won by 17 different clubs. Argentine clubs Boca Juniors and Independiente as well as Brazilian club Athletico Paranaense and Ecuadorian club Independiente del Valle are the most successful clubs in the cup's history, having won the tournament twice, with Boca Juniors being the only one to achieve it back-to-back, in 2004 and 2005.


title: Copa Sudamericana

text: In 1992, the Copa CONMEBOL was an international football tournament created for South American clubs that did not qualify for the Copa Libertadores and Supercopa Sudamericana. This tournament was discontinued in 1999 and replaced by the Copa Merconorte and Copa Mercosur. These tournaments started in 1998 but were discontinued in 2001. A Pan-American club cup competition was intended, under the name of Copa Pan-Americana, but instead, the Copa Sudamericana was introduced in 2002 as a single-elimination tournament with the reigning Copa Mercosur champion, San Lorenzo.


title: Copa Sudamericana

text: Until 2016 the tournament comprised 47 teams in a knockout format, with the Argentine and Brazilian teams getting byes to the second round and the defending champions entering the competition in the round of 16. Starting from the 2017 edition, the tournament implemented the following format changes:


title: Copa Sudamericana

text: The tournament shares its name with the trophy, also called the "Copa Sudamericana" or simply "la Sudamericana", which is awarded to the Copa Sudamericana winner.


title: Copa Sudamericana

text: La Otra Mitad de La Gloria (The other half of glory) is a promotional Spanish phrase used in the context of winning or attempting on winning the Copa Sudamericana. It is a term widely used by Spanish-speaking media. The tournament itself has become highly regarded among its participants since its inception. In 2004, Cienciano's conquest of the trophy ignited a party across Peru. The Mexican football federation regards Pachuca's victory in 2006 as the most important title won by any Mexican club.


title: Copa Sudamericana

text: Like the Copa Libertadores, the Copa Sudamericana was sponsored by a group of multinational corporations. Like the premier South American club football tournament forementioned, the competition used a single, main sponsor. The first major sponsor was Nissan Motors, who signed an 8-year contract with CONMEBOL in 2003.


title: Copa Sudamericana

text: However, the competition has had many secondary sponsors that invest in the tournament as well. Many of these sponsors are nationally based but have expanded to other nations. Nike supplies the official match ball, as they do for all other CONMEBOL competitions. Embratel, a brand of Telmex, is the only telecommunications sponsor of the tournament. Individual clubs may wear jerseys with advertising, even if such sponsors conflict with those of the Copa Sudamericana.


title: Copa Sudamericana

text: Clubs in the Copa Sudamericana receive $400,000 for qualifying for the competition. Afterwards, each club earns $90,000 per home match. That amount is derived from television rights and stadium advertising. In addition, CONMEBOL pays $500,000 to the winners.


title: Copa Sudamericana

text: Starting 2019 season, DirecTV (Latin America, exclude Brazil) and DAZN (Brazil) broadcast the Copa and Recopa Sudamericana coverage until 2022 from the previous broadcaster, Fox Sports (Latin America) and the CONMEBOL Libertadores-Sudamericana broadcast package are separate. RedeTV! (Brazil) will also broadcast the tournament.


title: Copa Sudamericana

text: As of the end of the 2014 tournament, LDU Quito and São Paulo have played most games in the tournament (50).


title: Plunderer (manga)

text: In a post-apocalyptic world called Alcia, every human being had their worth measured by a special "Count" printed on their bodies, which records an important aspect of their life. This Count dictates their social standings in relation to others, with people bearing a lower Count being unable to refuse orders from someone with a higher Count. When this Count decreases to 0, the person will be dragged down into the "Abyss", and is said to be dead for all eternity. The system governing these aspects were called the Althing.


title: Plunderer (manga)

text: For young Hina Farrow, her Count (initially shown to be 441) corresponds to how many hundreds of kilometers she has walked. Ever since her mother was dragged into the Abyss and leaving her with a last wish, she has been traveling alone and searching for someone called the Legendary Ace for the last five years, all the while carrying an enigmatic sphere with a 10,000 Count on it, later revealed to be one of the seven original Ballots. Hina's journey took a sudden turn when she met a strange masked pervert, Licht Bach, with a negative -999 Count. Revealed to be a true Legendary Ace himself, Licht rescued Hina from an Ace impostor from the Alcian Royal Army, but claimed that he was not the Ace she was looking for.


title: Plunderer (manga)

text: Their journey led them to meeting with members from influential factions within Alcia. They also came into contact with a 300-years old long history and conspiracy linked to the Althing, the mystery surrounding the Legendary Aces, and the fate of the world itself.


title: Plunderer (manga)

text: Suu Minazuki launched the manga in Kadokawa Shoten's "shōnen" manga magazine on "Monthly Shōnen Ace" on December 26, 2014 and ended its serialization on April 26, 2022. On July 8, 2018, during their panel at Anime Expo, Yen Press announced that they had licensed the manga.


title: Plunderer (manga)

text: An anime adaptation was announced by "Monthly Shōnen Ace" on February 18, 2018. The television series was directed by Hiroyuki Kanbe and written by Masashi Suzuki, with animation by Geek Toys. Yuka Takashina, Yūki Fukuchi, and Hiroko Fukuda provided the character designs. Junichi Matsumoto composed the series' music. It aired from January 8 to June 24, 2020 on Tokyo MX, KBS, TVA, SUN, BS11, and AT-X. Miku Itō performed the series' first opening theme song "Plunderer," while Rina Honnizumi performed the series' first ending theme song "Countless Days". Itō performed the series' second opening theme song "Kokou no Hikari Lonely dark", while Honnizumi, Ari Ozawa, and Shizuka Itō performed the series' second ending theme song "Reason of Life". Funimation acquired the series for distribution, and streamed the series on FunimationNow in English speaking regions, and on AnimeLab in Australia and New Zealand. Funimation premiered the first two episodes of the series on YouTube in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand on December 8, 2019. Following Sony's acquisition of Crunchyroll, the series was moved to Crunchyroll. It ran for 24 episodes.


title: Kubra Khan

text: Rabia Khan Professionally known by her stage name Kubra Khan (born 16 June 1993) is a British-Pakistani actress who works in Urdu television and films. She made her debut in 2014 with comedy-thriller film "Na Maloom Afraad" and later appeared in Hindi film "Welcome 2 Karachi". She has since starred in "Jawani Phir Nahi Ani 2" and "Parwaaz Hai Junoon" both (2018) and comedy drama "London Nahi Jaunga" (2022).


title: Kubra Khan

text: Her television appearances includes "Shaadi Mubarak ho" (2015)"Sang-e-Mar Mar" (2016), "Alif Allah Aur Insaan" (2017), "Alif" (2019) and "Hum Kahan Ke Sachay Thay" and "Sinf-e-Aahan" both in (2021). Khan was last appeared in Hum TV's "Sang-e-Mah" (2022).


title: Kubra Khan

text: In 2013, she was cast in the role of Hina in the Pakistani film "Na Maloom Afraad," a bank-worker and love interest of film's main lead Mohsin Abbas Haider. In 2015, Khan appeared in the Bollywood movie "Welcome 2 Karachi". She made her television debut in "Sang-e-Mar Mar" which aired on Hum TV in 2016. She appeared in several other television series such as "Alif Allah Aur Insaan" and "Daldal".


title: Kubra Khan

text: In 2018, she appeared in the Pakistani films "Jawani Phir Nahi Ani 2" and "Parwaaz Hai Junoon", both of which released on 22 August Eid-al-Adha. Khan will next feature opposite Humayun Saeed in Nadeem Baig's romantic-comedy film "London Nahi Jaunga", slated to release on Eid ul Azha 2020.


title: Max Caster

text: Max Caster (born July 31, 1989) is an American professional wrestler and rapper, currently signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW), where he teams with Anthony Bowens as The Acclaimed. With Bowens, Caster is currently one-half of the AEW World Tag Team Champions in each of their first reigns.


title: Max Caster

text: He began his wrestling career in 2015 and signed with AEW in November 2020, beginning a team with Bowens called The Acclaimed. Caster is known for his hip hop-inspired persona, often rapping to diss his opponents during his entrance. He released his debut album, "Critically Acclaimed, Vol.1", in May 2021, under the name Platinum Max.


title: Max Caster

text: Caster trained under Curt Hawkins and Pat Buck at their Create A Pro Wrestling Academy and made his debut for the school's promotion in February 2015, later becoming the inaugural CAP Champion in December of that year. He wrestled on the independent circuit for a number of promotions including Combat Zone Wrestling. He also made a WWE appearance as one of Bobby Lashley's (kayfabe) sisters on the May 22, 2018 episode of WWE RAW.


title: Max Caster

text: Caster made his first appearance for All Elite Wrestling (AEW) on the June 23, 2020 episode of "Dark", teaming with Luther and Serpentico in a losing effort against Jurassic Express (Jungle Boy, Luchasaurus and Marko Stunt). He came back with his new tag team partner Anthony Bowens on the October 27 episode of "Dark" in a losing effort to Best Friends (Chuck Taylor and Trent). In November 2020, AEW President Tony Khan announced that Caster, alongside Bowens, had been signed to a five-year contract with the promotion. The announcement also stated that Bowens and Caster would compete as a tag team named The Acclaimed.


title: Max Caster

text: Caster and Bowens made their first appearance on the December 16 episode of "Dynamite", defeating SoCal Uncensored. The following week, Caster and Bowens unsuccessfully challenged The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) for the AEW World Tag Team Championship.


title: Max Caster

text: On the March 3, 2021, episode of "Dynamite", Caster defeated 10 to qualify for the Face of the Revolution ladder match at Revolution. However, at Revolution, the match was won by Scorpio Sky. At Double or Nothing on May 30, Caster competed in the Casino Battle Royale, but he was eliminated by Christian Cage.


title: Max Caster

text: On the August 3 episode of "Dark", while making his entrance, Caster rapped about subjects such as Olympic gymnast Simone Biles' mental health issues, the Duke lacrosse case, the validity of PCR COVID-19 testing, and made a sexual joke about Julia Hart. AEW owner Tony Khan called the rap "terrible", said it should have been edited out of the show and announced that he would personally be taking over the editing of the show going forward. Caster was later removed from several independent events and AEW programming following the incident. He returned to action at "" on September 1.


title: Max Caster

text: On September 21, 2022, at AEW Grand Slam 2022, The Acclaimed, with Billy Gunn as their manager, would win their first AEW tag team championship from Swerve In Our Glory (Keith Lee & Swerve Strickland).


title: Max Caster

text: Caster's father is former NFL player Rich Caster. Caster was previously in a relationship with fellow professional wrestler Kris Statlander.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: The Global War on Terrorism Service Medal (GWOT-SM) is a military award of the United States Armed Forces which was created through Executive Order 13289 on 12 March 2003, by President George W. Bush. The medal recognizes those military service members who have supported operations to counter terrorism in the War on Terror from 11 September 2001, to a date yet to be determined.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: Previously awarded for the broadly defined awarding criterion of "support duty", the GWOT-SM is no longer a quasi-automatically awarded medal similar to the National Defense Service Medal (NDSM), whereas the GWOT-SM is awarded after thirty days of post-training active service. Effective September 11, 2022, it is now awarded to servicemembers only serving in the area of effect for approved campaigns related to the Global War on Terrorism.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: In September 2002, the U.S. Department of Defense sent a request to the U.S. Army Institute of Heraldry to provide a design for a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal. In January 2003, a design was completed, which was then approved and made official in March 2003.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal will cease being awarded when , "Declaration of National Emergency by Reason of Certain Terrorist Attacks", delivered on 14 September 2001, is terminated by the U.S. government. It was most recently extended in 2022 until 2023.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: To receive the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, a military service member must have served on active duty during a designated anti-terrorism operation for a minimum 30 consecutive or 60 non-consecutive days. For those who were engaged in combat, killed, or wounded in the line of duty the time requirement is waived. By July 2022, the Department of Defense updated the criteria to remove this requirement, and instead awarding it to servicemembers who were deployed to approved campaigns or within 12-miles of a country's shoreline where an ongoing campaign is being undertaken.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: The initial authorized operation for the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal was the so-called "Airport Security Operation" which occurred between 27 September 2001 and 31 May 2002. Additional operations, for which the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal is authorized, include the active military campaigns of Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Noble Eagle, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Future operations are at the discretion of United States component commanders upon approval from the United States Department of Defense.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: In 2004, Defense Department and military service branches began publishing directives, messages, and orders, specifying that the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal would be awarded not only for direct participation in specific operations, but also to any personnel who performed support duty of an anti-terrorism operation but did not directly participate. The phrase "support" was further defined as any administrative, logistics, planning, operational, technical, or readiness activity, which provides support to an operation of the Global War on Terrorism. As a result of this blanket term, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal became an eligible award for most personnel of the United States Armed Forces who performed service after 11 September 2001 through March 2004.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: With the orders granting the GWOT-SM for broadly-defined "support duty", awarding of the medal has essentially become practically automatic, akin to being a similar type of award as the National Defense Service Medal (graduates of training schools, ROTC, and service academies are typically presented both awards at the same time). The primary difference between the NDSM and the GWOT-SM is that the NDSM is automatic as soon as a person joins the military whereas the GWOTSM may only be presented after thirty days of active duty in a unit (or three months in the case of the Reserve Component). The regulations for Reservists and National Guardsmen are also not as well defined for the GWOT-SM as they are for the NDSM, since the presentation of the NDSM to reservists and National Guardsmen was codified and clarified as far back as the Persian Gulf War. Widely called the <nowiki>"support"</nowiki> loophole, the Department of Defense rescinded this eligibility requirement.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: The U.S. Army's regulations state that all soldiers "on active duty, including Reserve Component Soldiers mobilized, or Army National Guard Soldiers activated on or after 11 September 2001 to a date to be determined having served 30 consecutive days or 60 nonconsecutive days are authorized the GWOTSM."


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: The GWOT-SM was awarded automatically to all service members on Active Duty between 11 September 2001 and 31 March 2004. While the award is no longer automatic, the termination "date to be determined" has not been set. The Battalion Commander is the approval authority for the GWOT-SM. Service members are still eligible for the medal provided they meet the criteria in AR 600-8-22.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: U.S. Army soldiers serving on active duty primarily in a training status (basic training, advanced individual training, officer training courses, etc...) are not authorized award of the GWOT-SM for the active duty time they are in training. The criteria for the awards specifically states that a Soldier has to serve on active duty in support of a designated GWOT operation (Operation Noble Eagle [ONE], Operation Enduring Freedom [OEF], Operation Iraqi Freedom [OIF], Operation New Dawn [OND], Operation Inherent Resolve [OIR], and Operation Freedom's Sentinel [OFS]) for 30 consecutive days or 60 nonconsecutive days. Army soldiers in a training status are not considered to be supporting these designated operations.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: Regulations for rating the GWOT-SM are the same in the Navy, the Marine Corps, and Military Sealift Command for those who serve on both active duty, reserve duty, and support. Essentially, 30 days of consecutive duty or 60 days of non-consecutive duty in support of approved organizations. Eligibility begins when they reach their first permanent duty station. Civilian Mariners (CIVMARs) attached to Military Sealift Command's supply ships may be eligible for the Global War on Terrorism Civilian Service Medal. Beginning 11 September 2022, the Marine Corps will be limiting the award of the GWOT-SM to "service members who directly serve in a designated military counter-terrorism (CT) operation (e.g., deployed on orders for a designated CT operation; directly supported a designated CT operation on a full-time basis while assigned to an organization conducting such a CT operation) for a minimum of 30 days (consecutive or non-consecutive)."


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: Air Force service members were first awarded the GWOT-SM for conducting airport security operations in the fall and winter of 2001. It was subsequently awarded for participation or support of Operations Noble Eagle, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom. Members must be assigned, attached or mobilized to a unit participating in or serving in support of these designated operations for thirty consecutive days or sixty nonconsecutive days. Personnel who are not deployed may be eligible for service in support of the Global War on Terrorism. Examples of these duties are maintaining and loading weapons systems for combat missions, securing installations against terrorism, augmenting command posts or crisis action teams, and processing personnel for deployment.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: Coast Guard regulations concerning the award of the GWOT-SM, "From 11 September 2001 to 30 January 2005": Awarded to all Coast Guard active duty and reserve members on active duty during the eligibility period. To qualify, members must have served on active duty for a period of not less than 30 consecutive days or 60 non-consecutive days following initial accession point training. Service while assigned to training duty as a student, cadet, officer candidate, and duty under instruction (DUINS), does not count toward eligibility. This includes both training and summer cruises for the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and Officer Candidate School. For reservists, "active duty" includes ADT and IDT service in an operational vice classroom setting.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: From 31 January 2005 to a date to be determined: Eligible service members must be or have been assigned, attached, or mobilized to a unit participating in or serving in direct support of specified Global War on Terrorism operations (e.g., NOBLE EAGLE, LIBERTY SHIELD, NEPTUNE SHIELD, PORT SHIELD, ENDURING FREEDOM, IRAQI FREEDOM, or Area Commander-designated GWOT operations) for 30 consecutive or 60 cumulative days, or meet one of the following criteria:


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: (b) While participating in the operation, regardless of time, be killed, wounded, or injured requiring medical evacuation."


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: The medal is a bronze color metal disc 1.25 inches in diameter. The obverse depicts an eagle with spread wings. On the breast of the eagle is a shield of thirteen vertical bars. In the eagle's right claw is an olive branch and in the left claw are three arrows. The eagle is surmounted by a terrestrial globe with the inscription above "WAR ON TERRORISM SERVICE MEDAL." On the reverse is a laurel wreath on a plain field. The medal is suspended from an Old Glory Blue ribbon 1.375 inches wide with stripes of golden yellow, scarlet and white.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: Only one award of this medal may be authorized for any individual, thus no bronze or silver inch service stars are prescribed for second or subsequent awards.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: Although qualifying circumstances would be extremely rare, bronze inch battle stars were applicable for personnel who were engaged in actual combat against the enemy involving grave danger of death or serious bodily injury. Only a Combatant Command could initiate a request for a GWOT-SM (or Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal) battle star. This request would have contained the specific unit(s) or individual(s) engaged in actual combat, the duration for which combat was sustained, and a detailed description of the actions against the enemy. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was the approving authority for the specific battle stars.


title: Global War on Terrorism Service Medal

text: To date there have been no battle stars authorized for the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal. The Military Decorations and Awards Review Results released in January 2016 resolved to "eliminate authority for battle stars" in regard to the GWOT-SM.


title: 2000 Mules

text: 2000 Mules is a 2022 American conspiracy theory political film from right-wing political commentator Dinesh D'Souza that falsely claims unnamed nonprofit organizations associated with the Democratic Party paid "mules" to illegally collect and deposit ballots into drop boxes in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential election. D'Souza has a history of creating and spreading false conspiracy theories.


title: 2000 Mules

text: The Associated Press (AP) reported that the film relies on "faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data" provided by conservative non-profit True the Vote. FactCheck.org found the film's "supposed evidence is speculative."<ref name="Farley_6/10/2022"></ref> National Public Radio (NPR) reported True the Vote "made multiple misleading or false claims about its [own] work". AP reported that the film's assertion that True the Vote identified 1,155 paid mules in Philadelphia alone was false. The film presented a single unverified anonymous witness who said she saw people picking up what she "assumed" were payments for ballot collection in Arizona; no evidence of such payments was presented in any of the other four states. The film characterizes the alleged operation as "ballot trafficking" with "stash houses", but presents no evidence that ballots were illegally collected to be deposited in drop boxes.


title: 2000 Mules

text: A book version of the film was set to be released in September 2022, but shortly before the scheduled release, the book's publisher, Regnery Publishing, abruptly recalled the book's physical copies already sent to stores, and delayed the e-book release, citing an unspecified "publishing error." NPR obtained a copy of the book, and reported that it repeated the false claims made in the film, as well as making new false allegations, including naming specific nonprofits that D'Souza claims were involved in the conspiracy. Several of these groups have threatened legal action in response to the allegations.


title: 2000 Mules

text: "2000 Mules" opens with a misleadingly edited clip from October 2020 of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden responding to a podcaster's question about boosting his election turnout. After replying, "Republicans are doing everything they can to make it harder for people to vote, especially people of color to vote," Biden added, "we have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics." His second statement was taken out of context in clips and memes that went viral on conservative media at the time, purporting to be an admission that Democrats were preparing to commit election fraud. This was debunked at the time, as Biden was actually referring to safeguarding the vote, later adding, "What [Trump] is trying to do is discourage people from voting by implying that their vote won't be counted, it can't be counted, we're going to challenge it and all these things."<ref name="Himmelman_5/21/2022"></ref>


title: 2000 Mules

text: The film relies on data provided by True the Vote. According to NPR, "A conservative 'election integrity' group called True The Vote has made multiple misleading or false claims about its [own] work, NPR has found, including the suggestion that they helped solve the murder of an eight-year-old girl in Atlanta. The claims appear in a new pro-Trump film called "2,000 Mules"". NPR said that True the Vote's claim that it "solved a murder of a young little girl in Atlanta" was false.


title: 2000 Mules

text: Analysis conducted by the AP found the film was "based on faulty assumptions, anonymous accounts and improper analysis of cellphone location data".<ref name="Swenson_5/3/2022"></ref><ref name="Bump_4/29/2022"></ref> AP explained that in various swing counties across the five states, True the Vote used phone pings to cellphone towers to identify people who had passed near ballot drop boxes and various unnamed nonprofit organizations multiple times per day, concluding that such people were paid mules for ballot collection and deposits. Experts said such mobile phone tracking was not accurate enough to distinguish alleged mules from many other people who might walk or drive by a ballot box or nonprofit during the course of a day, such as delivery drivers, postal workers and cab drivers. True the Vote asserted it had conducted "pattern of life" filtering of such people before election season; the AP noted limitations of that approach.


title: 2000 Mules

text: The film also asserts that some of the geolocated alleged mules were present at what it called "antifa riots" in Atlanta during the George Floyd protests in spring 2020. AP explained that the geolocation data could not reliably determine why people were present at that event; they could have been peaceful protesters, police or firefighters responding to the protests, or business owners in the area. The geolocation data True the Vote had purchased began on October 1, 2020. D'Souza and Gregg Phillips, a True the Vote board member, asserted they had matched their geolocation data with data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). In the film, Phillips claims that "dozens and dozens and dozens of our mules show up on the ACLED databases" as what are characterized as "antifa rioters". ACLED said the claims were categorically false, noting it does not track cellphone data. True the Vote's leader Catherine Engelbrecht asserted Phillips was actually referring to a different organization, then mentioned ACLED, but she declined to name the different organization, saying Phillips relied on "multiple databases".


title: 2000 Mules

text: To illustrate the use of phone geolocation technology, in the film D'Souza speaks with Phillips, who alleges he used it to identify two suspects in an Atlanta homicide cold case, providing his analysis to the FBI, which he and D'Souza suggest resulted in arrests of the suspects. The homicide was not a cold case, and both suspects were arrested by state rather than federal officials, with no indication phone geolocation played a role. True the Vote stated days after "2000 Mules" was released that it had notified the FBI of its analysis more than two months after the suspects had been indicted. Promoting the film on his podcast, D'Souza said the FBI had forwarded the information to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) and the arrests resulted shortly thereafter; the GBI denied receiving such information. NPR was unable to confirm that True the Vote had provided analysis to the FBI; Engelbrecht told NPR she would not provide names of any FBI agents she claimed to have contacted "as I do not want them harassed". Phillips had previously claimed without evidence that non-citizens illegally cast as many as five million ballots in the 2016 elections.


title: 2000 Mules

text: The film likened its geolocation methodology to that used by federal investigators to identify individuals inside the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 attack, showing an image of individuals at the centers of large circles of uncertainty, fully within the building, to show they were there. Similar large circles of uncertainly would be insufficient to show someone was at, rather than near, a ballot drop box.<ref name="Bump_5/11/2022"></ref>


title: 2000 Mules

text: In the film, Phillips shows a diagram on a tablet computer purporting to show a mule traveling to 28 drop boxes in Atlanta. When that diagram is superimposed over a diagram of actual drop box locations, only some of the purported locations are near actual drop boxes. Phillips told "The Washington Post" that "the movie graphics are not literal interpretations of our data." Another diagram in the film purports to show geolocations superimposed over a map of Atlanta, but the map is actually of Moscow.


title: 2000 Mules

text: The film shows surveillance video of people allegedly depositing multiple ballots into drop boxes, though there was no way to match them with the geolocation data, and most states allow such ballot collection on behalf of family members and household members. In one segment, Phillips narrates that a woman deposited "a small stack" of ballots into a drop box, though it is not actually clear there was more than one ballot. The deposit allegedly occurred at 1am, after which the woman removed latex gloves and threw them away, which the film characterizes as suspicious. The incident occurred on January 5, 2021, during Georgia's runoff election, not during the 2020 presidential election. The film alleges that some of those captured in surveillance videos were wearing gloves to avoid leaving their fingerprints on ballots, but the videos are from the fall and winter of 2020, when people were taking precautions during the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: 2000 Mules

text: Phillips narrates a surveillance video in which a man on a bicycle rides up to a drop box and deposits his ballot. Phillips characterizes the man as "sort of frustrated as he starts to leave," though there is no obvious evidence of frustration, supposedly because the man had forgotten to photograph himself depositing the ballot. Phillips speculated, "they had started requiring the mules, apparently, to take pictures of the stuffing of the ballots. It appears that that's how they get paid." The man later took a photo of his bicycle next to the drop box, leading Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote to ask, "If you're just casting your own ballot, what reason in the world would you have to come back and take a picture of the box?" Elections officials had encouraged voters to share their experiences on social media to boost turnout; images posted on social media included people depositing ballots at that particular drop box.


title: 2000 Mules

text: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said his office investigated a surveillance video from the film showing a man depositing five ballots into a drop box, finding he had lawfully deposited ballots for himself and his family.<ref name="Niesse_5/10/2022"></ref> It was one of at least three surveillance videos from the film found by Georgia investigators to show lawful depositing of multiple ballots.


title: 2000 Mules

text: "2000 Mules" does not inform viewers that, even if the events it depicts occurred, every absentee ballot deposited in a drop box must be inside an envelope sent to each registered voter that includes the voter's registration information, signature, and a barcode for verification. Ballots lacking the envelope are rejected. True the Vote did not assert any of the ballots involved in the alleged mule scheme were illegal, though in the film D'Souza falsely asserts the Georgia man depositing multiple ballots for himself and his family was committing a "crime" with "fraudulent" ballots. In an interview with Philip Bump of "The Washington Post", D'Souza asserted that, despite not having shown there was any illegal ballot trafficking operation, any ballot delivered by such a process would therefore be invalid. The Republican chairman of the Georgia election board explained that a valid ballot remains so regardless of how it was received.


title: 2000 Mules

text: AP reported that the film's assertion that True the Vote identified 1,155 paid mules in Philadelphia alone was false. The film presents a single anonymous witness who says she saw people picking up what she "assumed" were payments for ballot collection in Arizona; no evidence of payments was presented in any of the other four states. Engelbrecht states in the film that according to unidentified "people who have shared information with us, it’s generally $10 a ballot" for what is characterized as "ballot trafficking" through "stash houses," but the film presents no evidence that ballots were collected from a nonprofit to be deposited in drop boxes. The film speculates that nonprofits acquired ballots from voters who had moved or died, by stealing them from mailboxes, or by coercion of incapacitated elderly people. None of the surveillance videos in the film show anyone dropping off ballots more than once. True the Vote claims about video of multiple drops by an individual, "Some of that footage was shown in the first trailer. It was taken out because the video is extremely poor quality."


title: 2000 Mules

text: D'Souza asserted as many as 400,000 ballots may have been involved, "more than enough to tip the balance in the 2020 presidential election," though True the Vote did not allege any of the ballots were illegal.<ref name="PolitiFact_5/4/2022"></ref>


title: 2000 Mules

text: The film shows a supercut of news clips after election day saying the results had changed from the night before. D'Souza describes what he and others consider suspicious the fact that Trump was leading in some key states early on election night, only for Biden to win the states by the next morning. This is attributable to a phenomenon known as blue shift, or red mirage: Republicans have a greater tendency to vote in person and their ballots are counted early, while Democrats have a greater tendency to vote by absentee ballots, which are counted later. This disparity was more pronounced in the 2020 election because Trump had spent months discouraging his supporters from voting by absentee ballot, which in some cases resulted in expected large jumps in Biden votes as absentee ballots were counted overnight.


title: 2000 Mules

text: The last third of the film consists of a panel discussion among several conservative and right-wing pundits, all of whom have shows with conservative outlet Salem Media Group, which was an executive producer of the film.


title: 2000 Mules

text: Phillips said in an interview with right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, one of the panelists in the film, that it took "12 people 16 hours a day for 15 months" to conduct their data analysis. Phillips said part of the analysis was conducted at the High Performance Computing Collaboratory at Mississippi State University. A university spokesman said he was not aware of any such analysis conducted there, noting Phillips had taken a publicly available tour and leased office space in a separate building in the same research park that "appeared to us to be sporadically used, if at all".<ref name="Dreisbach_5/17/2022"></ref>


title: 2000 Mules

text: The film conflates with its premise a case involving unlawful ballot collection by two Yuma County, Arizona, women during the August 2020 primary elections; the women had collected ballots for others, though they were not family members or caregivers as required by law, and their prosecutions were underway before the film's release. D'Souza said during a podcast that the Yuma County sheriff saw the film, "went berserk and has opened up an investigation" and "I believe there will be arrests very soon." The sheriff denied the claim, saying he had been investigating a variety of alleged voter misconduct issues for over a year, none of which were related to the film's claims. He later claimed that these two women pled guilty after having watched the film 2000 Mules. Alma Juarez pled guilty on January 18, 2022 and Guillerma Fuentes pled guilty on April 11, 2022,


title: 2000 Mules

text: whereas the film had a wide release on May 25, and limited screenings May 2 and 4, 2022, making this impossible.


title: 2000 Mules

text: Trump ally Patrick Byrne, who financially backed the Maricopa County, Arizona ballot audit that attempted but failed to find 2020 voting fraud in the county, also falsely said the Yuma investigation was in direct response to the film.


title: 2000 Mules

text: True the Vote did not cooperate with investigations by Georgia election officials, refusing to disclose the names of people who allegedly collected ballots. The State Election Board issued subpoenas to the organization in April 2022, seeking documents, recordings and names of individuals involved. The GBI examined the True the Vote allegations in fall 2021 but did not find sufficient evidence to open an investigation. In a letter to True the Vote, the bureau noted that the data it was provided counted a "visit" to a drop box as extending to a radius of . The GBI letter also mentioned that it was given cell site location information (CSLI), which is far less accurate than GPS data; GPS was not mentioned in the letter. D'Souza told the "Post" that True the Vote "did not exclusively use CSLI data" and that they told him the GBI had misrepresented the data.<ref name="Niesse_10/21/2021"></ref>


title: 2000 Mules

text: In October 2022, the office of Republican Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich referred True the Vote to the FBI and IRS for possible investigation, finding that Engelbrecht and Phillips had falsely told the office they had given their data to the Phoenix FBI office and were working as informants there, while telling the FBI office, the Arizona Senate and the public they had given their data to the attorney general's office, though they had not. Brnovich's office said True the Vote claimed to have evidence of 243 mules in Arizona, but presented no proof. The attorney general's office also suggested True the Vote's tax exempt nonprofit status should be examined.


title: 2000 Mules

text: In the first day of its theatrical release, the film grossed $300,000, making it the second-highest grossing documentary to date in 2022. According to Salem Media, an executive producer of the film, it grossed $10 million in revenues in the first two weeks of independent and streaming release, with over 1 million viewers. Salem said its net revenue makes it the most profitable political documentary in a decade. It earned $163,331 in its second weekend, and $50,696 in its third.


title: 2000 Mules

text: Former president Donald Trump, who has routinely made the false claim that he was the true winner of the 2020 election (in the popular vote), praised the film as the "greatest [and] most impactful documentary of our time" and as supposedly exposing "great election fraud", and arranged for a screening to be held at his Mar-a-Lago resort on May 4; the screening was attended by various people affiliated with the American right, some of whom (Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, among others) have also promoted the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. In his twelve page rebuttal to testimony and evidence that was presented in public hearings by the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Trump cited the movie in one of its sections that focused on "ballot trafficking" claims.


title: 2000 Mules

text: Media outlets such as PolitiFact, the Associated Press, and "The Washington Post" criticized the film for its factual errors and omissions, making implausible claims, and promoting conspiracy theories about the supposed theft of the 2020 presidential election. The "Post" characterized the film as presenting "the least convincing election-fraud theory yet".


title: 2000 Mules

text: Writing in "The Bulwark", Republican author and political advisor Amanda Carpenter characterized "2000 Mules" as "a hilarious mockumentary" that "doesn't survive the most basic fact-checks to support its most important claims". Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro of "The Daily Wire" said, "I think the conclusion of the film is not justified by the premises of the film itself. There are a bunch of dots that need to be connected. Maybe they will be connected, but they haven't been connected in the film." "The Dispatch", a conservative publication, wrote that "The film's ballot harvesting theory is full of holes" and that "D'Souza has a history of promoting false and misleading claims".<ref name="Himmelman_5/21/20222"></ref> Philip Bump summarized a discussion with D'Souza as "D'Souza admits his movie does not show evidence to prove his claims about ballots being collected and submitted."<ref name="Bump_5/17/2022"></ref>


title: 2000 Mules

text: On May 9, D'Souza criticized Fox News and Newsmax for not promoting the film, claiming that Fox News' Tucker Carlson instructed Engelbrecht not to mention it during his interview with her and that Newsmax had originally booked an interview with D'Souza to discuss the film but then canceled it.<ref name="Baragona_5/9/2022"></ref> Trump later made similar criticisms, claiming that "Fox News is no longer Fox News" due to not showing or discussing the film, and that the outlet's silence was pleasing to what he called "Radical Left Democrats".


title: 2000 Mules

text: On May 19, "The Daily Beast" reported that D'Souza continued to be frustrated that his film was not receiving much attention outside of an "election-denier movement" that already believed in Trump's false claims of a stolen election, with the movement's adherents demanding that conservative media outlets talk more about the film. Conservative talk radio host Jesse Kelly, responding to ever-increasing requests that he discuss the film on his radio show, dismissed those making such requests as "talk about "2000 Mules" guys" and "the bottom of the barrel". "2000 Mules" was initially available online for $29.99 until D'Souza lowered the price to $19.99 within days of its release. He alleged the film was being widely pirated and that someone who attended the Mar-a-Lago screening had recorded it. Kari Lake, a Trump-endorsed Arizona gubernatorial candidate who embraced the film, said she was "flabbergasted" that she had not been asked about it during an interview with a conservative network; Lake did not specify the network.<ref name="SommerandPetrizzo_5/19/2022" ></ref>


title: 2000 Mules

text: Eight Arizona Republican officials held a meeting with about 200 others to hear a presentation from Phillips and Engelbrecht weeks after the film's release. Phillips called the press "journalistic terrorists" for demonstrating the film's lack of proof. Asked if he had turned over evidence to law enforcement, Phillips said he had given data to the Arizona attorney general's office a year earlier; the office said they never received it. He declined to discuss specifics of the film's methodology, saying it was proprietary. Engelbrecht declined to name any of the nonprofits allegedly involved, asserting that doing so would interfere with law enforcement.


title: 2000 Mules

text: The editorial board of the "New York Post", a conservative tabloid that endorsed Trump in 2020, published an editorial on June 10, 2022 stating Trump "clings to more fantastical theories, such as Dinesh D'Souza's debunked '2,000 Mules,' even as recounts in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin confirm Trump lost."


title: 2000 Mules

text: Bill Barr, Trump's attorney general during the 2020 election, announced on December 1, 2020, that the Justice Department and FBI had investigated allegations of election fraud but found nothing significant. In June 2022 testimony to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Barr laughed at the mention of "2000 Mules", and when asked to assess it, dismissed its assertions there had been widespread election fraud, calling the movie "indefensible".


title: 2000 Mules

text: Jeffrey Clark, a former Trump Justice Department official who was the central figure in a Trump scheme to install Clark as acting attorney general to announce falsely that the department had found election fraud, promoted "2000 Mules" while taunting law professor Steve Vladeck and Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias on Twitter. He asked Elias, who had thwarted every lawsuit Trump's legal team had pursued after the election, "Were you part of the massive multi-State operation #TrueTheVote uncovered?".


title: 2000 Mules

text: Three screenings of "2000 Mules" were held during the Republican Party of Texas' June 2022 convention, which also saw attendees approve a resolution falsely describing Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election as illegitimate.


title: 2000 Mules

text: The AP sent a survey about drop boxes to the top elections offices in each state in May 2022. Forty-five states responded, reporting no instances of the boxes being connected to voter fraud or stolen ballots, and only a handful of cases in which boxes were damaged. D'Souza responded, "This AP article contends that mail-in drop boxes are fine because: 1. Election officials say so. 2. There have been hardly any cases of dropboxes being vandalized or damaged. Everyone that has seen #2000Mules will recognize how pathetic and silly this is!".


title: 2000 Mules

text: A book version of the film was set to be released in September 2022. The book had been promoted by D'Souza as including new evidence supporting the film's claims, including the names of specific nonprofits supposedly involved in the conspiracies. Shortly before the scheduled release, the book's publisher, Regnery Publishing, abruptly recalled the book's physical copies already sent to stores, and delayed the e-book release, citing an unspecified "publishing error." NPR obtained a copy of the book, and reported that it repeated the false claims made in the film, as well as making new false allegations, including naming specific nonprofits that D'Souza claims were involved in the conspiracy. Several of these groups have threatened legal action in response to the allegations.


title: 2000 Mules

text: The book was released in October 2022, with references to named nonprofits removed. Language regarding some claims about nonprofits was softened. Sections linking antifa and Black Lives Matter to election fraud were deleted.


title: SpongeBob SquarePants (season 13)

text: The thirteenth season of the American animated television series "SpongeBob SquarePants", created by former marine biologist and animator Stephen Hillenburg, began airing on Nickelodeon in the United States on October 22, 2020. The series chronicles the exploits and adventures of the title character and his various friends in the fictional underwater city of Bikini Bottom. This is the first season without Hillenburg's involvement, following his death on November 26, 2018, though he is still credited as an executive producer. Marc Ceccarelli, Vincent Waller, and Jennie Monica took over the executive producer roles after his death.


title: SpongeBob SquarePants (season 13)

text: On July 17, 2019, it was announced that the series had been renewed for a thirteenth season consisting of 13 episodes. The season began airing on October 22, 2020. On August 11, 2021, it was announced that Nickelodeon had ordered 13 additional episodes for the thirteenth season.


title: SpongeBob SquarePants (season 13)

text: The episodes are ordered below according to Nickelodeon's packaging order, and not their original production or broadcast order.


title: Client access license

text: A client access license (CAL) is a commercial software license that allows client computers to use server software services. Most commercial desktop apps are licensed so that payment is required for each installation, but some server products can be licensed so that payment is required for each device or user that accesses the service provided by the software. For example, an instance of Windows Server 2016 for which ten User CALs are purchased allows 10 distinct users to access the server.


title: Client access license

text: Commercial apps are licensed to end users or businesses: in a legally binding agreement between the proprietor of the software (the "licensor") and the end user or business (the "licensee"), the licensor gives permission to the licensee to use the app under certain limitations, which are set forth in the license agreement. In case of Microsoft, the consumer retail or "off-the-shelf" products generally use very similar licence agreements, allowing the licensee to use the software on one computer, subject to the usual terms and conditions. For businesses however, Microsoft offers several types of licensing schemes for a range of their products, which are designed to be cost effective, flexible, or both.


title: Client access license

text: Commercial server software, such as Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005 require licenses that are more expensive than those which are purchased for desktop software like Windows Vista. All clients that connect to these server products must have a license to connect in order to use their services. These special purpose licenses come in the form of a CAL.


title: Client access license

text: A CAL legally permits client computers to connect to commercial server software. They usually come in the form of a certificate of authenticity (CoA) and a license key, which is sometimes attached to the certificate itself. The various editions of most of Microsoft's server software usually include a small number of CALs, and this allows the software to be used by either a few users or a few computers, depending on the CAL licensing mode. If more clients need to access the server, then additional CALs must be purchased.


title: Client access license

text: Microsoft Server products require a CAL for each unique client regardless of how many will be connecting at any single point in time. Some of Microsoft's server software programs do not require CALs at all, as is the case of Windows Server Web Edition. Microsoft SQL Server can be licensed for CALs, or alternatively by CPU cores.


title: Client access license

text: CALs apply to either a "device" (as defined in the license agreement) or a "user". A business is free to choose either mode.


title: Client access license

text: With user CALs, each CAL allows one user to connect to the server software whenever they need to. Once the CAL has been allocated to that user, it cannot be used by another user. Any number of CALs can be purchased to allow five, five hundred, or any number of users to connect to the server. With user CALs, each user can connect to the server software from any number of devices. The devices are not counted, but only a set number of users can connect.


title: Client access license

text: Per-device mode operates in much the same way, but limits the number of devices which can connect, rather than the number of users. One CAL enables one device to connect to and use the server software, regardless of how many users connect from that particular device.


title: Client access license

text: Although User and Device CALs are currently the same price, they may not be used interchangeably, and cannot be switched without buying new CALs. The price of User CALs has increased since December 2012 (in the UK), although the device CAL remains the same.


title: Client access license

text: The Core CAL is a special CAL offered by Microsoft through corporate license agreements such as "Enterprise", "Select" or "Open Value". The Core CAL, is a combination of CALs for Windows Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, System Center Configuration Client Management License, Lync Server and Forefront Endpoint Subscription License. Core CALs are approximately 30 percent cheaper than the sum of the aforementioned licenses.


title: Client access license

text: With the release of the 2007 products, Microsoft started offering the Enterprise CAL Suite. The Enterprise CAL Suite combines 15 CALs, including the Core CAL combination, Enterprise functionality of Exchange, Lync and SharePoint Servers, as well as System Center Data Protection Manager, Operation Manager and Service Manager Client Management Licences. As for the Core CALs, Enterprise CALs are only available through Open, Enterprise or Select agreements.


title: Client access license

text: CALs usually enable connectivity to server software regardless of the edition of the software. For example, CALs purchased to enable client connectivity with Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition can be used with Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition. However, backwards compatibility is generally assured. For example, Windows Server 2012 CALs can not only be used to access servers running on Windows Server 2012, but they can be used to access one of the servers running Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2003 and any previous versions at any given time.


title: Client access license

text: Terminal Services is a function of Microsoft Windows that allows several types of connections to the server components of the system. Windows Server versions prior to 2003 do not necessarily require the use of specialized Terminal Services CALs; rather, clients which are of at least the same or lower version of the operating system are allowed access automatically. For example, Windows NT 4.0 clients may connect to Windows NT 4.0 terminal servers but not Windows 2000 or later; Windows 2000 or Windows XP clients may connect to Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 terminal servers. This is called the equivalency license.


title: Client access license

text: The system for enforcing the number of TS CALs ("Microsoft Enforced Licensing") used on versions later than NT was abused by the "FLAME" malware, leading to a patch in 2012 restricting the Certificate Creation system used for Terminal Services.


title: Client access license

text: The number of per-user TS CALs on Windows 2008 is not enforced: supposedly, this was because Microsoft did not have time to finalize technical enforcement before the release of the operating system.


title: Animatronics

text: Animatronics refers to mechatronic puppets. They are a modern variant of the automaton and are often used for the portrayal of characters in films and in theme park attractions.


title: Animatronics

text: It is a multidisciplinary field integrating puppetry, anatomy and mechatronics. Animatronic figures can be implemented with both computer and human control, including teleoperation. Motion actuators are often used to imitate muscle movements and create realistic motions. Figures are usually encased in body shells and flexible skins made of hard and soft plastic materials and finished with colors, hair, feathers and other components to make them more lifelike. Animatronics stem from a long tradition of mechanical automata powered by hydraulics, pneumatics and clockwork. Greek mythology and ancient Chinese writings mention early examples of automata. The oldest extant automaton is dated to the 16th century.


title: Animatronics

text: Before the term "animatronics" became common, they were usually referred to as "robots". Since then, robots have become known as more practical programmable machines that do not necessarily resemble living creatures. Robots (or other artificial beings) designed to convincingly resemble humans are known as "androids". The term "Animatronics" is a portmanteau of "animate" and "electronics". The term "Audio-Animatronics" was coined by Walt Disney in 1961 when he started developing animatronics for entertainment and film. Audio-Animatronics does not differentiate between animatronics and androids.


title: Animatronics

text: "Autonomatronics" was also defined by Disney Imagineers to describe more advanced Audio-Animatronic technology featuring cameras and complex sensors to process and respond to information in the character's environment.


title: Animatronics

text: The first animatronics characters shown to the public were a dog and a horse, as separate attractions at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Sparko, The Robot Dog (the "pet" of Elektro the Robot) is considered the first modern-day animatronic character, as it represented a living animal rather than a purely mechanical figure. An unnamed animatronic horse, which was reported to gallop realistically, was also exhibited.


title: Animatronics

text: Laffing Sal was one of several automated characters used to attract carnival and amusement park patrons to funhouses and dark rides throughout the United States. Its movements were accompanied by a raucous recorded laugh that sometimes frightened small children and annoyed adults.


title: Animatronics

text: Walt Disney is often credited for popularizing animatronics for entertainment after he bought an animatronic bird while vacationing (in either New Orleans or Europe). Disney's vision for Audio-Animatronics was primarily focused on patriotic displays rather than amusements.


title: Animatronics

text: In 1951, two years after Disney developed animatronics, he commissioned machinist Roger Broggie and sculptor Wathel Rogers to lead a team tasked with creating a 9" figure that could talk and recreate dance routines performed by actor Buddy Ebsen. The figure, dubbed Project Little Man, was never finished. A year later, Walt Disney Imagineering was created. Disney used what appeared as an animatronic bird in his film "Mary Poppins" (1964), which was actually controlled by bicycle cables.


title: Animatronics

text: After Project Little Man, the Imagineering team's first project was a "Chinese head" which was on display in the lobby of their office. Customers could ask the head questions and it replied with words of wisdom. The eyes blinked and its mouth opened and closed.


title: Animatronics

text: Walt Disney Productions started using animatronics in 1955 for Disneyland's Jungle Cruise ride, then for its Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room attraction, which featured animatronic tropical birds and other characters.


title: Animatronics

text: The first fully audio-animatronic human figure was that of Abraham Lincoln, created by Disney for the 1964 World's Fair in New York. In 1965, Disney upgraded the figure, dubbed the Lincoln Mark II, to appear at the Opera House at Disneyland Resort in California. For three months, while the original Lincoln performed in New York, the Lincoln Mark II gave five performances per hour at Disneyland. Actor Royal Dano voiced both versions of the figure.


title: Animatronics

text: Lucky the Dinosaur is the first free-roving Audio-Animatronic figure created by Disney's Imagineers. An approximately green "Segnosaurus" figure, it pulls a flower-covered cart and is led by Chandler the Dinosaur Handler. The flower cart Lucky pulls conceals its computer and power source.


title: Animatronics

text: The Muppet Mobile Lab is a free-roving Audio-Animatronic unit designed by Walt Disney Imagineering. Two Muppet characters, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker, pilot their "laboratory" vehicle through the park, interacting with guests and deploying special effects such as foggers, flashing lights, moving signs, confetti cannons and spray jets. The attraction is currently deployed at Hong Kong Disneyland in Hong Kong.


title: Animatronics

text: The film industry has been a driving force revolutionizing the technology used to develop animatronics. Animatronics are used in situations where a creature does not exist, the action is too risky or costly to use real actors or animals, or the action could never be obtained with a living person or animal. Its main advantage over CGI and stop motion is that the simulated creature has a physical presence moving in front of the camera in real time. The technology behind animatronics has become more advanced and sophisticated over the years, making the puppets even more lifelike.


title: Animatronics

text: Animatronics were first introduced by Disney in the 1964 film "Mary Poppins" which featured an animatronic bird. Since then, animatronics have been used extensively in such movies as "Jaws", and "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial", which relied heavily on animatronics.