Boomerang (countermeasure)

Boomerang is a gunfire locator developed by DARPA and BBN Technologies primarily for use against snipers. Boomerang is mounted on mobile vehicles such as the Humvee, Stryker, and MRAP combat vehicles. There were plans to integrate it into the Land Warrior system.

Development

Boomerang grew out of a program conceived by the U.S. Department of Defense in late 2003, months after the traditional combat phase of the Iraq War had ended on 1 May, at a time when it was clear that U.S. troops were increasingly at risk from a growing and aggressive insurgency. Often, troops in noisy Humvees did not know they were being shot at until someone was hit. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approached DARPA and asked for near-term solutions that could be applied to the conflict in Iraq. Rumsfeld was looking for something that did not have to be a perfect solution, but was at least better than nothing.

The U.S. Army and Special Operations Command began using a limited number of French-made PILAR anti-sniper systems in 2003, but at $65,000 per copy was too expensive to field in great quantities. This led DARPA to develop a new, more affordable system. Karen Wood, a program manager at DARPA, said BBN's previous work was the most impressive that was examined. BBN had previously developed a less sophisticated counter sniper system named "Bullet Ears" under DARPA sponsorship in 1997.

Boomerang (soundtrack)

The Boomerang soundtrack is the official soundtrack to the 1992 film Boomerang. The album was released June 30, 1992 on LaFace Records.

The soundtrack peaked at four on the Billboard 200 chart in 1992. By April 1995, it was certified triple platinum in sales by the RIAA, after sales exceeding 3,000,000 copies in the United States.

Release and reception

The album peaked at four on the U.S. Billboard 200 and reached the top spot on the R&B Albums chart. The album was certified gold in August 1992 and eventually reached triple-platinum status by April 1995.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic said in his review that the soundtrack was "actually better than the film itself," and stated that "most of the album is first-rate contemporary urban soul, hip-hop, and new jack swing."

Track listing

Boomerang (1976 film)

Boomerang (French: Comme un boomerang, Italian: Il figlio del gangster) is a 1976 French-Italian crime film starring Alain Delon, Carla Gravina and Charles Vanel and directed by José Giovanni.

It recorded admissions of 787,208 in France.

Cast

References

External links

Make (software)

In software development, Make is a build automation tool that automatically builds executable programs and libraries from source code by reading files called Makefiles which specify how to derive the target program. Though integrated development environments and language-specific compiler features can also be used to manage a build process, Make remains widely used, especially in Unix.

Besides building programs, Make can be used to manage any project where some files must be updated automatically from others whenever the others change.

Origin

There are now a number of dependency-tracking build utilities, but Make is one of the most widespread, primarily due to its inclusion in Unix, starting with the PWB/UNIX 1.0, which featured a variety of tools targeting software development tasks. It was originally created by Stuart Feldman in April 1976 at Bell Labs. Feldman received the 2003 ACM Software System Award for the authoring of this widespread tool.

Before Make's introduction, the Unix build system most commonly consisted of operating system dependent "make" and "install" shell scripts accompanying their program's source. Being able to combine the commands for the different targets into a single file and being able to abstract out dependency tracking and archive handling was an important step in the direction of modern build environments.

List of Caribbean membranophones

This is a list of membranophones used in the Caribbean music area, including the islands of the Caribbean Sea, as well as the musics of Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, Belize, Garifuna music, and Bermuda. It only includes membranophones that are indigenous to the local music area or are a vital and long-standing part of local culture. It does not include membranophones that are, for example, a part of Western style orchestras, nor does it include trap sets and other common membranophones used in popular music recordings of many genres across the world. Almost all membranophones are drums and percussion instruments.

The Hornbostel-Sachs number is given after each instrument.

References