Needle

A needle is generally a thin, cylindrical object, often with a sharp point on the end.

Needle may refer to:

Crafting

Botany

Places

Needle (module)

Needle (I11) is a Dungeons & Dragons module. Author: Frank Mentzer (1987)

Plot summary

In Needle, the player characters are dispatched to a far jungle to retrieve a magical obelisk. The characters return to their employers with the obelisk after a perilous journey, and find out that the obelisk is a portal to another world, which the characters must pass through and learn how to deal with the residents on the other side.

In this adventure, the player characters volunteer for a king to explore a dense jungle that was once home to a great civilization, with a magic obelisk at its center. In Part 1, Ruins of Empire, the party travels to the jungle and explores the ruins. In Part 2, Retrieval, the party leads a team hampered by disease and jungle animals to transport the obelisk to the king. In Part 3, The Powers That Be, assuming the party is successful, the obelisk is placed in its new position, where it reveals a gate to another world.

Table of contents

Notable nonplayer characters

Needle (comics)

The Needle is a comic book character. He is a mutant supervillain in Marvel Comics' main shared universe. Created by Mark Gruenwald, Carmine Infantino, and Al Gordon, the character first appeared in Spider-Woman #9 (December 1978).

Publication history

The character's origin was recounted in his debut appearance in Spider-Woman #9.

Creator Mark Gruenwald brought the character back during his run on the West Coast Avengers as a member of the villain team Night Shift, which included other former Spider-Woman foes.

Fictional character biography

After being mugged one night while leaving work, Josef Saint, an elderly tailor, lost an eye and his ability to speak. While recuperating, he discovered that he has the power to paralyze with his gaze. Seeking revenge, Saint assumed the guise of the vigilante the Needle. Armed with a yard-long needle, the mute villain attacked young men on the streets at night, sewing their mouths shut. After victimizing S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jerry Hunt, the Needle incurred the wrath of Spider-Woman, the agent's girlfriend, and she took him out with a close-range venom blast. He was subsequently arrested.

Pulse-code modulation

Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent sampled analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, Compact Discs, digital telephony and other digital audio applications. In a PCM stream, the amplitude of the analog signal is sampled regularly at uniform intervals, and each sample is quantized to the nearest value within a range of digital steps.

Linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) is a specific type of PCM where the quantization levels are linearly uniform. This is in contrast to PCM encodings where quantization levels vary as a function of amplitude (as with the A-law algorithm or the μ-law algorithm). Though PCM is a more general term, it is often used to describe data encoded as LPCM.

A PCM stream has two basic properties that determine the stream's fidelity to the original analog signal: the sampling rate, which is the number of times per second that samples are taken; and the bit depth, which determines the number of possible digital values that can be used to represent each sample.

PCM (disambiguation)

PCM or pulse-code modulation is a digital representation of an analog signal.

PCM may also refer to:

Computing

Technology

PCM30

The pulse code modulation (PCM) technology was patented and developed in France in 1938, but could not be used because suitable technology was not available until World War II. This came about with the arrival of digital systems in the 1960s, when improving the performance of communications networks became a real possibility. However, this technology was not completely adopted until the mid-1970s, due to the large amount of analog systems already in place and the high cost of digital systems, as semiconductors were very expensive. PCM’s initial goal was that of converting an analog voice telephone channel into a digital one based on the sampling theorem.

PCM30 describes an application of pulse-code modulation (PCM) in which 30 telephony analog signals are binary coded into a digital signal stream. The term is used today mostly as a synonym for the encoding of 30 channels each with a signalling rate of 64-kbit/s. This rate is also used in the first stage of European PDH technique, so PCM30 is also known as E1.