Prime Series

Prime series is a digital television channel, one of seven owned by Prime, part of Telenet. The channel, which is viewable only in Belgium, chiefly shows drama series made elsewhere by, amongst others, Home Box Office (HBO) and the American Broadcasting Company (ABC).

Most programs can be viewed again by way of the Prime à la carte on-demand facility.

References

Prime (film)

Prime is a 2005 American romantic comedy film starring Uma Thurman, Meryl Streep and Bryan Greenberg. It was written and directed by Ben Younger. The film grossed $67,937,503 worldwide.

Plot

Rafi (Uma Thurman) is a recently divorced, 37-year-old career woman from Manhattan who becomes romantically involved with David (Bryan Greenberg), a talented 23-year-old Jewish painter from the Upper West Side. Rafi shares all her secrets with her therapist Lisa (Meryl Streep) who, unbeknownst to Rafi, is David's mother. Lisa, supportive of Rafi's relationship with a younger man, discovers the connection and finds herself not only faced with the ethical and moral dilemma of counseling David's girlfriend, but also the reality that she feels differently about the relationship now that she knows her son is involved. Lisa consults her own therapist, and they decide that it is in the best interest of her patient Rafi for Lisa to continue treatment, as long as the relationship remains the "fling" it appears to be.

Subprime lending

In finance, subprime lending (also referred to as near-prime, non-prime, and second-chance lending) means making loans to people who may have difficulty maintaining the repayment schedule, sometimes reflecting setbacks, such as unemployment, divorce, medical emergencies, etc. Historically, subprime borrowers were defined as having FICO scores below 640, although "this has varied over time and circumstances."

These loans are characterized by higher interest rates, poor quality collateral, and less favorable terms in order to compensate for higher credit risk. Many subprime loans were packaged into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and ultimately defaulted, contributing to the financial crisis of 2007–2008.

Proponents of subprime lending maintain that the practice extends credit to people who would otherwise not have access to the credit market. Professor Harvey S. Rosen of Princeton University explained, "The main thing that innovations in the mortgage market have done over the past 30 years is to let in the excluded: the young, the discriminated-against, the people without a lot of money in the bank to use for a down payment."

Prime95

Prime95 is the freeware application written by George Woltman that is used by GIMPS, a distributed computing project dedicated to finding new Mersenne prime numbers. More specifically, Prime95 refers to the Windows and Mac OS X versions of the software.

MPrime is the Linux command-line interface version of Prime95, to be run in a text terminal or in a terminal emulator window as a remote shell client. It is identical to Prime95 in functionality, except it lacks a graphical user interface.

Although most of the GIMPS software's source code is publicly available, it is technically not free software as users must abide by the project's distribution terms if the software is used to discover a prime number with at least 100,000,000 decimal digits and wins the $150,000 bounty offered by the EFF. As such, a user who uses Prime95 to discover a qualifying prime number would not be able to claim the prize directly ($50,000 will go to the person who finds the prime number). A free software package would not have this restriction.

Series and parallel circuits

Components of an electrical circuit or electronic circuit can be connected in many different ways. The two simplest of these are called series and parallel and occur frequently. Components connected in series are connected along a single path, so the same current flows through all of the components. Components connected in parallel are connected so the same voltage is applied to each component.

A circuit composed solely of components connected in series is known as a series circuit; likewise, one connected completely in parallel is known as a parallel circuit.

In a series circuit, the current through each of the components is the same, and the voltage across the circuit is the sum of the voltages across each component. In a parallel circuit, the voltage across each of the components is the same, and the total current is the sum of the currents through each component.

Consider a very simple circuit consisting of four light bulbs and one 6 V battery. If a wire joins the battery to one bulb, to the next bulb, to the next bulb, to the next bulb, then back to the battery, in one continuous loop, the bulbs are said to be in series. If each bulb is wired to the battery in a separate loop, the bulbs are said to be in parallel. If the four light bulbs are connected in series, there is same current through all of them, and the voltage drop is 1.5 V across each bulb, which may not be sufficient to make them glow. If the light bulbs are connected in parallel, the currents through the light bulbs combine to form the current in the battery, while the voltage drop is across each bulb and they all glow.

Séries+

Séries+ is a Canadian French language Category A specialty channel devoted to scripted comedy and dramatic programming. The channel is owned by Corus Entertainment.

History

On May 21, 1999, Alliance Atlantis Communications (AAC) and Premier Choix Networks (a division of Astral Media) were granted approval by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to launch a national French-language specialty television service called Canal Fiction, described as a "service devoted to drama."

The channel was launched on January 31, 2000 as Séries+ at 6pm EST.

On January 18, 2008, a joint venture between Canwest and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners known as CW Media purchased AAC and gained AAC's interest in Séries+.

On October 27, 2010, Shaw Communications completed its acquisition of Canwest and Goldman Sachs' interest in CW Media, giving it control of CW Media's 50% interest in Séries+.

On March 4, 2013, Corus Entertainment announced that it would acquire Astral Media's stakes in Séries+ and Historia, as well as several other properties, under separate transactions with the two companies. The purchase was tied to Bell Media's pending takeover of Astral Media; an earlier proposal had been rejected by the CRTC in October 2012 due to concerns surrounding its total market share following the merger, but was restructured under the condition that the companies divest certain media properties. In a separate deal, Corus also acquired Shaw's interests in Séries+ and Historia, giving it full ownership. The deals were approved by the CRTC on December 20, 2013 and Corus officially become the full owner of the channel on January 1, 2014.

203 series

The 203 series (203系) is an electric multiple unit (EMU) train type operated in Japan between 1982 and 2011 by Japanese National Railways (JNR) and later by East Japan Railway Company (JR East), and currently operated by KRL Jabodetabek in Indonesia and Philippine National Railways (PNR) in the Philippines.

Operations

The 203 series sets were on through services between the Joban Line and Tokyo Metro Chiyoda Line until they were replaced by E233-2000 series EMUs, and finally withdrawn from services in Japan in September 2011.

Formation

The sets were formed as follows.

Cars 3, 6, and 9 were each fitted with one PS21 pantograph.

Interior

Interior view, September 2007

Interior view, September 2007

Priority seating, November 2010

Priority seating, November 2010

History

Withdrawal

The trains were gradually replaced by new E233-2000 series EMUs, and the last set ran in revenue service on 26 September 2011.

Overseas operations

Indonesia

Five former 203 series sets have been sent to KRL Jabodetabek (KCJ) in Jakarta, Indonesia. All trains are in operation in the Jabodetabek area with 8 cars per set, due to the short platforms at most stations in Indonesia.