Lotus (Santana album)

Lotus is a 1974 live album recording of the San Franciscan latino rock band Santana at the Osaka Koseinenkin Hall, Osaka, Japan on 3-4 July 1973. It was originally released in 1974 as a triple vinyl LP in Japan only. The first U.S. release was in 1991 as a 2-CD set.

Lotus has been re-issued on vinyl in the Netherlands and on CD in Japan in 2006 as a 3-CD set. It was also re-issued as a 3-LP set in the U.S. in 2013.

Quadrophonic recording

The original live recordings were mixed in 4-channel quadraphonic sound and released in the CBS SQ matrix system. The SQ encoding permits all 4 channels to be contained in a 2 channel stereo version, which is compatible with conventional stereo playback equipment.

Some releases of this album have been marked as "Quad" or "SQ" and some are not. However, all known releases of this album use the same SQ encoded 2 channel recordings. Therefore the 4 independent channels can still be heard on modern equipment provided that the listener has a proper SQ decoder and 4 channel playback system.

Lotus (Arashi song)

"Lotus" is a song recorded by Japanese boy band Arashi. It was released on February 23, 2011 by their record label J Storm. The single is used as the theme song to the drama Bartender starring Arashi member Masaki Aiba. It was released in two editions: a regular edition containing two bonus tracks and instrumental versions of all the songs released in the single, and an limited edition containing a bonus track along with a DVD with a music video of the single.

According to Oricon, the single was ranked as the sixth best-selling single in Japan for the year 2011.

Track list

References

Lotus Cortina

Lotus Cortina is the commonly used term for the Ford Cortina Lotus, a high-performance sports saloon, which was produced in the United Kingdom from 1963 to 1970 by Ford in collaboration with Lotus Cars. The original version, which was based on the Ford Cortina Mark 1, was promoted by Ford as the "Consul Cortina developed by Lotus", with "Consul" later being dropped from the name. The Mark 2 was based on the Ford Cortina Mark 2 and was marketed by Ford as the "Cortina Lotus".

There were 3,306 Mark I and 4,093 Mark 2 Lotus Cortinas produced.

Mk1

The history of the Cortina Lotus began in 1961. Colin Chapman had been wishing to build his own engines for Lotus, mainly because the Coventry Climax unit was so expensive. Colin Chapman's chance came when he commissioned Harry Mundy (a close friend and designer of the Coventry Climax engine and technical editor for Autocar) to design a twin-cam version of the Ford Kent engine. Most of the development of the engine was done on the 997cc and 1,340cc bottom end, but in 1962 Ford released the 116E five bearing 1,499 cc engine and work centred on this. Keith Duckworth, from Cosworth, played an important part in tuning of the engine. The engine's first appearance was in 1962 at the Nürburgring in a Lotus 23 driven by Jim Clark. Almost as soon as the engine appeared in production cars (Lotus Elan), it was replaced with a larger capacity unit (82.55 mm bore to give 1,557 cc). This was in order to get the car closer to the 1.6 litre capacity class in motorsport.

Fragile (Yes album)

Fragile is the fourth studio album from the English progressive rock band Yes, released in November 1971 on Atlantic Records. It is their first album recorded with keyboardist Rick Wakeman in the band's line-up after Tony Kaye was fired for having a lack of interest in learning more electronic keyboards. Formed of nine tracks, four are group performances while the remaining five are solo features written by each member. Its cover was designed by Roger Dean, who would design their future band logo, stage sets, and many of their future album covers.

Fragile received a positive reception upon its release and was a commercial and critical success, reaching No. 4 on the US Billboard Top LPs chart and No. 7 on the UK Albums Chart. "Roundabout" was released as a single in the US which reached No. 13 and is one of the band's best known songs. The album is certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for selling over 2 million copies.

Background

On 31 July 1971, Yes performed the final concert of their 1970–71 tour of Europe and North America at Crystal Palace Park to support The Yes Album (1971). The line-up during this time consisted of singer Jon Anderson, bassist Chris Squire, drummer Bill Bruford, keyboardist Tony Kaye, and guitarist Steve Howe. Following the tour, Yes started work on their next studio record that was originally conceived as a double album with a combination of studio and live tracks. The concept could not be realised due to the time required to make it. Ideas to have the album recorded in Miami, Florida with producer Tom Dowd also never came to fruition.

Fragile (novel)

Fragile is a novel by bestselling author Lisa Unger. It is the first book set in The Hollows, and features Jones Cooper.

Awards and Honors

Fragile was chosen by ABC's Good Morning America as a top book pick for great summer reads and selected as a Hot Book by Harper's Bazaar. Target named Lisa Unger an "Emerging Author".

References

Software brittleness

In computer programming and software engineering, software brittleness is the increased difficulty in fixing older software that may appear reliable, but fails badly when presented with unusual data or altered in a seemingly minor way. The phrase is derived from analogies to brittleness in metalworking.

Causes

When software is new, it is very malleable; it can be formed to be whatever is wanted by the implementers. But as the software in a given project grows larger and larger, and develops a larger base of users with long experience with the software, it becomes less and less malleable. Like a metal that has been work-hardened, the software becomes a legacy system, brittle and unable to be easily maintained without fracturing the entire system.

Brittleness in software can be caused by algorithms that do not work well for the full range of input data. A good example is an algorithm that allows a divide by zero to occur, or a curve-fitting equation that is used to extrapolate beyond the data that it was fitted to. Another cause of brittleness is the use of data structures that restrict values. This was commonly seen in the late 1990s as people realized that their software only had room for a 2 digit year entry; this led to the sudden updating of tremendous quantities of brittle software before the year 2000. Another more commonly encountered form of brittleness is in graphical user interfaces that make invalid assumptions. For example, a user may be running on a low resolution display, and the software will open a window too large to fit the display. Another common problem is expressed when a user uses a color scheme other than the default, causing text to be rendered in the same color as the background, or a user uses a font other than the default, which won't fit in the allowed space and cuts off instructions and labels.