Portfolio (Grace Jones album)

Portfolio is the debut studio album by Grace Jones, released in 1977 by Island Records. It spawned her first big hit, "La Vie en rose".

Background

Having enjoyed a successful modelling career in Paris and New York in the early 1970s, Grace Jones released a series of singles throughout 1975-1976. None of them, however, managed to succeed in mainstream charts. Jones secured a record deal with Island Records in 1977 and found wider recognition only with her debut Island LP, Portfolio.

The album was recorded and mixed in Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia, and released in autumn 1977 as the first of three albums made with the legendary disco record producer Tom Moulton. Side one of the original vinyl album is a continuous disco medley covering three songs from Broadway musicals, "Send in the Clowns" by Stephen Sondheim from A Little Night Music, "What I Did for Love" from A Chorus Line and "Tomorrow" from Annie. Side two opens with Jones' very personal re-interpretation of Édith Piaf's "La Vie en rose" and continues with three new recordings, two of which have been co-written by Jones herself. Italian release would omit "Sorry" and "That's the Trouble", adding an extended, over 7-minute long version of "I Need a Man" instead. Album's artwork was designed by Richard Bernstein, an artist working for Interview, who would later contribute to Jones' two next albums' artworks and with whom the singer would re-team up for the 1986 record Inside Story.

Portfolio.com

Portfolio.com is a website published by American City Business Journals that provides news and information for small to mid-sized businesses (SMB). It was formerly the website for the monthly business magazine Condé Nast Portfolio, published by Condé Nast from 2007 to 2009.

Portfolio.com is continually updated and has several interactive features, including "BizWatch," which has updates on companies and executives from selected news sources.

History

Portfolio.com's April 2007 launch by Condé Nast was heavily reported on due, in part, to its large estimated budget reported to be between $100 million and $125 million (covering multiple years of operation), as well as the boldness of the publisher to launch a business magazine at a time when similar magazines such as BusinessWeek, Business 2.0, Forbes, and Fortune were struggling to sell advertising space.

In October 2008, the magazine reduced its staff by 20 percent, and changed to publishing only 10 times per year. The stand-alone website, portfolio.com, was merged with other Condé Nast Web sites, with advertising sales for the site handled by Wired Digital.

Ministry (government department)

A ministry is a specialized organization responsible for a sector of government public administration, sometimes led by a minister or a senior public servant, that can have responsibility for one or more departments, agencies, bureaus, commissions or other smaller executive, advisory, managerial or administrative organisations.

Ministries are usually an immediate subdivision of the Cabinet (i.e. the executive branch of the government), and subordinate to its chief executive who is either called prime minister, chief minister, president, minister-president or (federal) chancellor.

A government will usually have numerous ministries, each with a specialised field of providing public service which is often called a portfolio. The precise competences and responsibilities of national ministries vary greatly between countries, but some common ones include Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Justice and Ministry of the Interior. In many countries these ministries are called the Big Five.

Comè

Comè is a town and arrondissement located in the Mono Department of Benin. The commune covers an area of 163 square kilometres and as of 2012 had a population of 33,507 people. It was home to a refugee camp for Togolese refugees until it was closed in 2006.

References

Coordinates: 6°24′N 1°53′E / 6.400°N 1.883°E / 6.400; 1.883

COM file

A COM file is a type of simple executable file. On the Digital Equipment operating systems of the 1970s, .COM was used as a filename extension for text files containing commands to be issued to the operating system (similar to a batch file). With the introduction of CP/M (a microcomputer operating system), the type of files commonly associated with COM extension changed to that of executable files. This convention was later carried over to MS-DOS. Even when complemented by the more general .exe file format for executables, the compact COM files remain viable and frequently used in MS-DOS.

The .COM file name extension has no relation to the .com (for "commercial") top-level Internet domain name. However, this similarity in name has been exploited by malicious computer virus writers.

MS-DOS binary format

The COM format is the original binary executable format used in CP/M and MS-DOS. It is very simple; it has no header (with the exception of CP/M 3 files), and contains no standard metadata, only code and data. This simplicity exacts a price: the binary has a maximum size of 65,280 (FF00h) bytes (256 bytes short of 64 KB) and stores all its code and data in one segment.

Video game bot

In video games, a bot is a type of weak AI expert system software which for each instance of the program controls a player in deathmatch, team deathmatch and/or cooperative human player, most prominently in the first-person shooters (FPS). Computer-controlled bots may play against other bots and/or human players in unison, either over the Internet, on a LAN or in a local session. Features and intelligence of bots may vary greatly, especially with community created content. Advanced bots feature machine learning for dynamic learning of patterns of the opponent as well as dynamic learning of previously unknown maps – whereas more trivial bots may rely completely on lists of waypoints created for each map by the developer, limiting the bot to play only maps with said waypoints. Bots can be created by game-developers as well as by users after the release. Using bots is against the rules of all of the current main Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG).

In MUDs, players may run bots to automate laborious tasks: this activity can sometimes make up the bulk of the gameplay. While a prohibited practice in most MUDs, there is an incentive for the player to save his/her time while the bot accumulates resources, such as experience, for the player character.