Alias (board game)

Alias is a board game, where the objective of the players is to explain words to each other. Hence, Alias is similar to Taboo, but the only forbidden word in the explanations is the word to be explained. The game is played in teams of varying size, and fits well as a party game for larger crowds. The game is very competitive.

Alias has been developed in Finland and is produced by Nelostuote Oy under the brand name Tactic. The game has been on the market since the early 1990s and is one of the most popular party games in Finland. Along the years, many different versions of the board game have appeared: As well as the New Alias, the Alias family currently also includes the Junior Alias for children, the Alias travel game, and as the newest introduction, DVD Alias.

The name

The name Alias comes from the word alias, meaning also known as.

Basic Alias

The board in Alias is a "path" consisting of sequential curving numbers on a red background. The game contains 8 numbered groups. The game is divided into turns of about one minute of length. The teams play in turns, and on each team's turn, one of the team members has to explain words on word cards to the other team members. The other team members take guesses at the word, and words that have been correctly guessed earn the team one point per word. Explanation mistakes (meaning the explainer uses the word to be explained, part of it, or a derivative of it), and words passed over without being guessed take points away. The players move on the board as many places as they have earned points on their turn. If, for example, the team lands on the number 7, the word to be explained from the cards is word number 7. The first team to reach the goal wins. The game is recommended for players over 7 years.

Alias (season 1)

The first season of Alias premiered September 30, 2001 on ABC and concluded May 12, 2002 and was released on DVD in region 1 on September 2, 2003. Guest stars in season one include Sir Roger Moore, Terry O'Quinn, Quentin Tarantino, and Gina Torres.

Apart from Truth Be Told, the episodes of Alias are often unconventionally structured in that the title credits are usually shown well into the plot, almost as an afterthought. Also, usually a plot finishes at mid-episode and a new plot begins, so that every episode finishes with a cliffhanger. The impression thus created is that an episode will conclude the previous one and plant the seeds of the next one.

Main characters

Cast

Main characters

Aliasing (computing)

In computing, aliasing describes a situation in which a data location in memory can be accessed through different symbolic names in the program. Thus, modifying the data through one name implicitly modifies the values associated with all aliased names, which may not be expected by the programmer. As a result, aliasing makes it particularly difficult to understand, analyze and optimize programs. Aliasing analysers intend to make and compute useful information for understanding aliasing in programs.

Examples

Array bounds checking

For example, the C programming language does not perform array bounds checking. One can then exploit the implementation of the programming language by the compiler and the computer architecture's assembly language conventions, to achieve aliasing effects.

If an array is created on the stack, with a variable laid out in memory directly beside that array, one could index outside the array and directly change the variable by changing the relevant array element. For example, if we have an int array of size 2 (for this example's sake, calling it arr), next to another int variable (call it i), arr[2] (i.e. the 3rd element) would be aliased to i if they are adjacent in memory.

MIX (XM)

MIX, often branded on-air as Today's Mix, was a channel on XM Satellite Radio playing the Hot Adult Contemporary format. It was located on XM 12 (previously 22) and plays a mix of hit songs from 1980-present day, except for urban music. MIX was one of 5 channels on XM's platform that plays commercial advertisements, which amount to about 3–4 minutes an hour, and are sold by Premiere Radio Networks. The channel was programmed by Clear Channel Communications, and was Clear Channel's most listened to channel on XM Radio, in both cume and AQH, according to the Fall 2007 Arbitron book.

Artists heard on MIX included Sheryl Crow, John Mayer, Lenny Kravitz, Jewel and Nelly Furtado; and groups like Maroon 5 and Blues Traveler. One can also hear top chart hits including songs from Train, Alanis Morissette, 3 Doors Down, Evanescence, Dave Matthews Band, No Doubt, Santana, Matchbox Twenty, and U2.

On June 8, 2011, this was replaced by a simulcast by WHTZ, licensed to Newark, New Jersey and serving the New York City area.

KMXV

KMXV ("Mix 93.3") is a Top 40 (CHR) station based in Kansas City, Missouri, United States. The Steel City Media outlet operates at 93.3 MHz with an ERP of 100 kW. Its current slogan is "Kansas City's #1 Hit Music Station". It is also one of two Top 40's competing in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the other being KCHZ. The station's studios are located at Westport Center in Midtown Kansas City, and the transmitter site is in the city's East Side.

The station was sold off by CBS Radio to Wilks Broadcasting in November 2006 as part of a nationwide reduction of radio stations by CBS. On June 12, 2014, Wilks announced that it is selling its Kansas City cluster (of which KMXV is part of) to Pittsburgh-based Steel City Media. The sale was approved on September 26, 2014, and was consummated on September 30.

History

The station began in 1958 as KCMK-FM (Kansas City, Missouri/Kansas), a classical station, but had several format changes (primarily country) over the next sixteen years. County DJ Jack Wesley "Cactus Jack" Call was at the station (from KCKN) for one week when he was killed on January 25, 1963 in a car crash. Singer Patsy Cline sang at a benefit for him at Memorial Hall (Kansas City, Kansas) on March 3, 1963. She was unable to leave Kansas City the next day because the airport was fogged in and was killed in a plane crash on March 5, 1963 en route from Fairfax Airport to Nashville.

MIX (Microsoft)

MIX is a Microsoft conference held annually for web developers and designers at which Microsoft showcases upcoming web technologies. The conference is held each spring at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Unlike many of Microsoft's technical conference, MIX has been promoted more heavily to designers by inviting popular speakers from other popular web design conferences, such as SXSW, and has sponsored a CSS design contest each year to promote the conference. Microsoft has also used this conference as an opportunity to promote new web design and development tools such as Silverlight and Microsoft Expression Studio.

On January 24, 2012, the official Microsoft blog stated that there will be no MIX 2012. MIX was replaced by BUILD later that year.

MIX 06

MIX 06 was held from March 20 to March 22, 2006. It focused on the new Internet Explorer 7 and WPF (a part called WPF/E later became known as Silverlight). It featured a keynote by Bill Gates in which he said "We need microformats".

Data warehouse

In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis. DWs are central repositories of integrated data from one or more disparate sources. They store current and historical data and are used for creating analytical reports for knowledge workers throughout the enterprise. Examples of reports could range from annual and quarterly comparisons and trends to detailed daily sales analyses.

The data stored in the warehouse is uploaded from the operational systems (such as marketing, sales, etc., shown in the figure to the right). The data may pass through an operational data store for additional operations before it is used in the DW for reporting.

Types of systems

The difference between data warehouse and data mart

Types of data marts

Software tools

The typical extract-transform-load (ETL)-based data warehouse uses staging, data integration, and access layers to house its key functions. The staging layer or staging database stores raw data extracted from each of the disparate source data systems. The integration layer integrates the disparate data sets by transforming the data from the staging layer often storing this transformed data in an operational data store (ODS) database. The integrated data are then moved to yet another database, often called the data warehouse database, where the data is arranged into hierarchical groups often called dimensions and into facts and aggregate facts. The combination of facts and dimensions is sometimes called a star schema. The access layer helps users retrieve data.