Dota 2

Dota 2 is a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed and published by Valve Corporation. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux in July 2013, following a Windows-only public beta testing phase that began in 2011, and is the stand-alone sequel to Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion pack, The Frozen Throne. Dota 2 is one of the most actively played games on Steam, with maximum peaks of over a million concurrent players.

Dota 2 is played in matches between two five-player teams, each of which occupies a stronghold in a corner of the playing field. A team wins by destroying the other side's "Ancient" building, located within the opposing stronghold. Each player controls one of 111 playable "Hero" characters that feature unique powers and styles of play. During a match, the player collects gold, items, and experience points for their Hero, while combating Heroes of the opposite team.

Alliance

An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called allies. Alliances form in many settings, including political alliances, military alliances, and business alliances. When the term is used in the context of war or armed struggle, such associations may also be called allied powers, especially when discussing World War I or World War II.

A formal military alliance is not required for being perceived as an ally—co-belligerence, fighting alongside someone, is enough. According to this usage, allies become so not when concluding an alliance treaty but when struck by war.

When spelled with a capital "A", the word "Allies" usually denotes the countries who fought together against the Central Powers in World War I (the Allies of World War I), or those who fought against the Axis Powers in World War II (the Allies of World War II). The term has also been used by the United States Army to describe the countries that gave assistance to the South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

Defense of the Ancients

Defense of the Ancients (DotA) is a multiplayer online battle arena mod for the video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, based on the "Aeon of Strife" map for StarCraft. The scenario objective is for each team to destroy the opponents' Ancient, heavily guarded structures at opposing corners of the map. Players use powerful units known as heroes, and are assisted by allied heroes and AI-controlled fighters. As in role-playing games, players level up their heroes and use gold to buy equipment during the mission.

The scenario was developed with the "World Editor" of Reign of Chaos, and was updated upon the release of its expansion, The Frozen Throne. There have been many variations of the original concept; the most popular being DotA Allstars, which eventually was simplified to DotA with the release of version 6.68. This specific scenario has been maintained by several authors during development, the latest of whom is the anonymous developer known as "IceFrog" who has developed the game since 2005.

All Is Lost

All Is Lost is a 2013 survival drama film written and directed by J. C. Chandor. The film stars Robert Redford as a man lost at sea. Redford is the only cast member, and the film has very few spoken words. All Is Lost is Chandor's second feature film, following his 2011 debut Margin Call. It screened out of competition at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

Plot

Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, a man (Robert Redford) wakes to find water flooding his boat. He has collided with a wayward shipping container, ripping a hole in the hull. He uses a sea anchor to dislodge the container, then changes course to tilt the boat away from the hole. He patches the hole and uses the manual bilge pump to remove the water from the cabin.

The boat’s navigational and communications systems have been damaged by saltwater intrusion. The man tries to repair the marine radio and connects it to one of the boat's batteries but is unsuccessful. When he climbs the mast to repair an antenna lead, he sees an oncoming tropical storm. When the storm arrives, he runs before the wind. He intends to bring the boat into a hove-to position, but when crawling to the bow to hoist the storm jib, he is thrown overboard and regains the deck after a long struggle. The boat capsizes, turtles after a further 180-degree roll and is dis-masted, and most of the equipment is destroyed. With the boat badly holed and sinking, the man abandons ship in an inflatable life raft, salvaging whatever he can to survive.

Dark Passage

Dark Passage (1946) is a crime novel by David Goodis and was the basis for the 1947 film noir of the same name.

Plot

Vincent Parry, wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, escapes from prison and is taken in by Irene Jansen, an artist with an interest in his case. Helped by a friendly cabbie, Parry gets a new face from a plastic surgeon, thereby enabling him to dodge the authorities and find his wife's real killer. He has difficulty staying hidden, in part because Madge Rapf, the spiteful woman whose testimony sent him up to prison, and who has an unhealthy interest in Irene, keeps stopping by.

Film and television

Legal issues

The copyright status of Dark Passage was the subject of a dispute between Goodis' estate and United Artists Television. The Goodis estate claimed that the UA series The Fugitive constituted copyright infringement. United Artists claimed that the work had fallen into the public domain under the terms of the Copyright Act of 1909 because it had been first published as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post, and that Goodis never obtained a separate copyright on the work. In Goodis v. United Artists Television, Inc., 425 F.2d 397, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit limited the so-called "Doctrine of indivisibility", explaining that it was a judicial doctrine related only to standing, and should not operate to completely deprive a claimant of his copyright.