A score bug is a digital on-screen graphic which is displayed in a broadcast of a sporting event, displaying the current score and other statistics. It is similar in function to a scoreboard, and is usually placed at either the top or lower third of the television screen. == History == The concept of a persistent score bug was devised by Sky Sports head David Hill, who was dissatisfied over having to wait to see what the score was after tuning into a football match in-progress. The score bug was introduced when Sky launched its coverage of the then newly-formed English Premier League in August 1992. Hill's boss repeatedly demanded that the graphic be removed, describing it as the "stupidest thing [he] had ever seen". Hill defied the boss's demands and kept the graphic in place. ITV introduced a score bug at the start of the 1993–94 football season, and the BBC introduced a score bug towards the end of 1993. The concept was introduced to the United States by ABC Sports and ESPN during coverage of the 1994 FIFA World Cup. Their justification for the graphic was to provide a location for a rotating series of sponsor logos, in order to allow matches to air without commercial interruption. With the acquisition of rights to the National Football League (NFL) by BSkyB's American sibling Fox (a fellow venture of Rupert Murdoch), Hill became the first president of Fox Sports. Under Hill's leadership, Fox introduced a version of the score bug branded as the "Fox Box", which was part of its inaugural season of NFL coverage in 1994. Variety criticized it as an "annoying see-through clock and score graphic" and expressed concern for people "who actually watched the beginning of the game and would rather have their screen clear of graphics". Hill even received a death threat from an irate viewer, with a specific emphasis on him being a "foreigner", but the score bug soon became a ubiquitous feature for American football broadcasts, along with almost all American sports broadcasts in the years that followed. Dick Ebersol of NBC Sports initially opposed the idea of a score bug, as he thought that fans would dislike seeing more graphics on the screen and would change the channel from blowout games if the score was constantly being displayed. Since the 2010s, the on-air design and positioning of some score bugs have been influenced by the needs of Internet video (especially when viewing an event on devices with smaller screens), including bugs noticeably larger than prior iterations designed with television viewing in mind, or designs primarily kept towards the bottom-center of the screen (easing the ability for the bug to remain visible when highlights are cropped for square videos posted on social media). == Details == Score bugs used in team sports typically include the names of both teams, an abbreviation of the team's name, and/or the team's logo; for individual sports, they include the names of individual competitors. In sports where a game clock or playing periods are used, those are generally also displayed as part of the score bug. Some broadcasts also include teams' win-loss records. In 2024, ESPN experimented with adding a persistent win probability meter to its bug in Major League Baseball, which was based on input from its statisticians. === Variations === In addition to the above information, score bugs in some sports include additional information: In baseball, score bugs display the current inning, number of outs, the pitch clock if applicable, and a graphic displaying which bases are occupied; and usually include names of the current pitcher and batter, the pitcher's pitch count, and the number of balls and strikes accrued by the batter. In basketball, score bugs generally include the shot clock, the number of fouls accrued by each team, and whether a team is in the bonus. In cricket, score bugs often take the form of larger dashboards across the bottom of the screen, displaying the current team up and their number of runs, wickets, and overs, a display showing the runs scored and number of balls faced by the current batting partnership, and statistics for the opposing team's bowler (including the number of wickets scored and runs given up). In American football, score bugs usually include the play clock and the down and distance of the current play; they also incorporate graphics indicating when a penalty flag has been thrown. In ice hockey, score bugs display when a penalty or power play is in effect, and often include the number of shots on goal accrued by each team. In golf, Fox popularized the display of a persistent leaderboard graphic in the bottom-right of the screen, usually displaying the top 5. ==== Racing ==== Telecasts of automobile races often include a score bug with the current positions of participants, statistics such as distance behind the leader, and the remaining distance or number of laps. In the mid-2010s, NASCAR broadcasters such as Fox began to transition from horizontal tickers to vertical leaderboards (also referred to as "pylons", in reference to the physical scoring pylons at). The CW differentiated itself by using a horizontal display that divides the field into multiple columns along the bottom of the screen.
Mobile cloud storage
Mobile cloud storage is a form of cloud storage that is accessible on mobile devices such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Mobile cloud storage providers offer services that allow the user to create and organize files, folders, music, and photos, similar to other cloud computing models. Services are used by both individuals and companies. Most cloud file storage providers offer limited free use but charge for additional storage once the free limit is exceeded. These costs are usually charged as a monthly subscription rate and have different rates depending on the amount of storage desired. In 2018, cloud services revenue was about $182.4 billion and in 2022 it is projected to grow to $331.2 billion. The cloud storage industry was projected to grow 17.2 percent in 2019 (Costello, 2019). == History == The concept of cloud computing trace back to 1960s, when the groundwork for modern internet and network technologies was being laid (Human for humans, 2024). One of the pivotal figures in this early period was J.C.R. Licklider, a visionary computer scientist who worked on ARPANET, the precursor to the internet. Licklider's ideas set the stage for the development of distributed computing systems, which are fundamental to cloud computing. Moving into the 1990s, AT&T introduced PersonaLink Services, a more advanced online platform offering electronic mail and online storage. Major turning point in 2006 The launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2006 marked a major turning point. AWS introduced Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), which allowed businesses and developers to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. This development was revolutionary, providing scalable, reliable, and low-cost data storage infrastructure that transformed how organizations managed their data. == Applications == Some mobile device manufacturers include mobile cloud storage apps with their product. These apps facilitate synchronization of user files across multiple platforms. Part of the process for setting up new mobile devices frequently includes configuring a cloud storage service to Backup the device's files and information. Apple iOS devices come pre-loaded and configured to use Apple's mobile cloud storage service iCloud. Google offers a similar feature with the Android operating system by backing up the device using a Google Drive account. The Samsung Galaxy smartphone has partnered with Dropbox, while Microsoft similarly offers Microsoft OneDrive. Some mobile cloud storage apps are platform-independent. For example, Nasuni's Mobile Access app is available on any Android or iOS device. Most companies offering Cloud Storage have secure website to access files allowing use on any device that can browse the Internet.
Event store
An event store is a type of database optimized for storage of events. Conceptually, an event store records only the events affecting an entity, dossier, or policy, and the state of the entity at any point in its history can be reconstructed by replaying its contributing events in sequential order. Events (and their corresponding data) are the only "real" facts that should be stored in the database. All other objects can be derived from these events, meaning they are instantiated in memory by runtime code as needed (e.g. for showing in a user interface). In theory, any object that aggregates over recorded event data is not stored in the database. Instead these objects are built 'on the fly', by traversing the event history. When the aggregated object instance is no longer needed, it can simply be discarded (released from memory). == Example with insurance policies == For example, the event store concept of a database can be applied to insurance policies or pension dossiers. In these policies or dossiers the instantiation of each object that make up the dossier or policy (the person, partner(s), employments, etc.) can be derived and can be instantiated in memory based on the real world events. == Double timeline == A crucial part of an event store database is that each event has a double timeline: This enables event stores to correct errors of events that have been entered into the event store database before. The two dates are: Valid date is the date at which the event has become valid. Transaction date is the date at which the event is entered into the database. == Error correction == Another crucial part of an event store database is that events that are stored are not allowed to be changed. Once stored, also erroneous events are not changed anymore. The only way to change (or better: correct) these events is to instantiate a new event with the new values and using the double timeline. A correcting event would have the new values of the original event, with an event data of that corrected event, but a different transaction date. This mechanism ensures reproducibility at each moment in the time, even in the time period before the correction has taken place. It also allows to reproduce situations based on erroneous events (if required). == Advantages and disadvantages == One advantage of the event store concept is that handling the effects of back dated events (events that take effect before previous events and that may even invalidate them) is much easier. An event store will simplify the code in that rolling back erroneous situations and rolling up the new, correct situations is not needed anymore. Disadvantage may be that the code needs to re-instantiate all objects in memory based on the events each time a service call is received for a specific dossier or policy. == Compared to regular databases == In regular databases, handling backdated events to correct previous, erroneous events can be painful as it often results in rolling back all previous, erroneous transactions and objects and rolling up the new, correct transactions and objects. In an event store, only the new event (and its corresponding facts) are stored. The code will then redetermine the transactions and objects based on the new facts in memory.
List of color palettes
The following is a list that contains color palettes for notable computer graphics, terminals and video game consoles. Only a simulated image using a palette and its name are given. Main articles are linked from the name of each palette, test charts, sample colours, simulated images, and further technical details (including references). During older eras of computing, manufacturers developed many different display systems often in a competitive, non-collaborative basis (with a few exceptions in the VESA consortium), creating many proprietary, non-standard different instances of display hardware. Often, as with early personal and home computers, a given machine employed its unique display subsystem, also with its unique color palette. Furthermore, software developers had made use of the color abilities of distinct display systems in many different ways. The result is that there is no single common standard nomenclature or classification taxonomy which can encompass every computer color palette. In order to organize the material, color palettes have been grouped following certain criteria. First, generic monochrome and full RGB repertories common to various computer display systems are listed. Then, usual color repertories used for display systems that employ indexed color techniques. And finally, specific manufacturers' color palettes implemented in many representative early personal computers and video game consoles of various brands. The list for personal computer palettes is split into two categories: 8-bit and 16-bit machines. This is not intended as a true strict categorization of such machines, because mixed architectures also exist (16-bit processors with an 8-bit data bus or 32-bit processors with a 16-bit data bus, among others). The distinction is based more on broad 8-bit and 16-bit computer ages or generations (around 1975–1985 and 1985–1995, respectively) and their associated state of the art in color display capabilities. The following is the common color test chart and sample image used to render each palette in this list: See further details in the summary paragraph of the corresponding article. == List of monochrome and RGB palettes == In this article, the term monochrome palette means a set of intensities for a monochrome display, and the term RGB palette is defined as the complete set of combinations a given RGB display can offer by mixing all the possible intensities of the red, green, and blue primaries available in its hardware. These are generic complete repertories of colors to produce black and white and RGB color pictures by the display hardware, not necessarily the total number of such colors that can be simultaneously displayed in a given text or graphic mode of any machine. RGB is the most common method to produce colors for displays; so these complete RGB color repertories have every possible combination of R-G-B triplets within any given maximum number of levels per component. For specific hardware and different methods to produce colors than RGB, see the List of computer hardware palettes and the List of video game consoles sections. For various software arrangements and sorts of colors, including other possible full RGB arrangements within 8-bit depth displays, see the List of software palettes section. === Monochrome palettes === These palettes only have shades of gray. === Dichrome palettes === Each permuted pair of red, green, and blue (16-bit color palette, with 65,536 colors). For example, "additive red green" has zero blue and "subtractive red green" has full blue. === Regular RGB palettes === These full RGB palettes employ the same number of bits to store the relative intensity for the red, green and blue components of every image's pixel color. Thus, they have the same number of levels per channel and the total number of possible colors is always the cube of a power of two. It should be understood that 'when developed' many of these formats were directly related to the size of some host computers 'natural word length' in bytes—the amount of memory in bits held by a single memory address such that the CPU can grab or put it in one operation. === Non-regular RGB palettes === These are also RGB palettes, in the sense defined above (except for 4-bit RGBI, which has an intensity bit that affects all channels at once), but either they do not have the same number of levels for each primary channel, or the numbers are not powers of two, so are not represented as separate bit fields. All of these have been used in popular personal computers. == List of software palettes == Systems that use a 4-bit or 8-bit pixel depth can display up to 16 or 256 colors simultaneously. Many personal computers in the later 1980s and early 1990s displayed at most 256 different colors, freely selected by software (either by the user or by a program) from their wider hardware's color palette. Usual selections of colors in limited subsets (generally 16 or 256) of the full palette includes some RGB level arrangements commonly used with the 8 bpp palettes as master palettes or universal palettes (i.e., palettes for multipurpose uses). These are some representative software palettes, but any selection can be made in such types of systems. === System specific palettes === These are selections of colors officially employed as system palettes in some popular operating systems for personal computers that feature 8-bit displays. === RGB arrangements === These are selections of colors based on evenly ordered RGB levels, mainly used as master palettes to display any kind of image within the limitations of the 8-bit pixel depth. === Other common uses of software palettes === == List of computer hardware palettes == In old personal computers and terminals that offered color displays, some color palettes were chosen algorithmically to provide the most diverse set of colors for a given palette size, and others were chosen to assure the availability of certain colors. In many early home computers, especially when the palette choices were determined at the hardware level by resistor combinations, the palette was determined by the manufacturer. Many early models output composite video colors. When seen on TV devices, the perception of the colors may not correspond with the value levels for the color values employed (most noticeable with NTSC TV color system). For current RGB display systems for PCs (Super VGA, etc.), see the 16-bit RGB and 24-bit RGB for High Color (thousands) and True Color (millions of colors) modes. For video game consoles, see the List of video game consoles section. For every model, their main different graphical color modes are listed based exclusively in the way they handle colors on screen, not all their different screen modes. The list is organized roughly historically by video hardware, not by branch. They are listed according to the original model of each system, which means that extended versions, clones, and compatibles also support the original palette. === Terminals and 8-bit machines === === 16-bit machines === === Video game console palettes === Color palettes of some of the most popular video game consoles. The criteria are the same as those of the List of computer hardware palettes section.
Sprite (computer graphics)
In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional bitmap that is integrated into a larger scene, most often in a 2D video game. Originally, the term sprite referred to fixed-sized objects composited together, by hardware, with a background. Use of the term has since become more general. Systems with hardware sprites include arcade video games of the 1970s and 1980s; game consoles including as the Atari VCS (1977), ColecoVision (1982), Famicom (1983), Genesis/Mega Drive (1988); and home computers such as the TI-99/4 (1979), Atari 8-bit computers (1979), Commodore 64 (1982), MSX (1983), Amiga (1985), and X68000 (1987). Hardware varies in the number of sprites supported, the size and colors of each sprite, and special effects such as scaling or reporting pixel-precise overlap. Hardware composition of sprites occurs as each scan line is prepared for the video output device, such as a cathode-ray tube, without involvement of the main CPU and without the need for a full-screen frame buffer. Sprites can be positioned or altered by setting attributes used during the hardware composition process. The number of sprites which can be displayed per scan line is often lower than the total number of sprites a system supports. For example, the Texas Instruments TMS9918 chip supports 32 sprites, but only four can appear on the same scan line. The CPUs in modern computers, video game consoles, and mobile devices are fast enough that bitmaps can be drawn into a frame buffer without special hardware assistance. Beyond that, GPUs can render vast numbers of scaled, rotated, anti-aliased, partially translucent, very high resolution images in parallel with the CPU. == Etymology == According to Karl Guttag, one of two engineers for the 1979 Texas Instruments TMS9918 video display processor, this use of the word sprite came from David Ackley, a manager at TI. It was also used by Danny Hillis at Texas Instruments in the late 1970s. The term was derived from the fact that sprites "float" on top of the background image without overwriting it, much like a ghost or mythological sprite. Some hardware manufacturers used different terms, especially before sprite became common: Player/Missile Graphics was a term used by Atari, Inc. for hardware sprites in the Atari 8-bit computers (1979) and Atari 5200 console (1982). The term reflects the use for both characters ("players") and smaller associated objects ("missiles") that share the same color. The earlier Atari Video Computer System and some Atari arcade games used player, missile, and ball. Stamp was used in some arcade hardware in the early 1980s, including Ms. Pac-Man. Movable Object Block, or MOB, was used in MOS Technology's graphics chip literature. Commodore, the main user of MOS chips and the owner of MOS for most of the chip maker's lifetime, instead used the term sprite for the Commodore 64. OBJs (short for objects) is used in the developer manuals for the NES, Super NES, and Game Boy. The region of video RAM used to store sprite attributes and coordinates is called OAM (Object Attribute Memory). This also applies to the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. == History == === Arcade video games === The use of sprites originated with arcade video games. Nolan Bushnell came up with the original concept when he developed the first arcade video game, Computer Space (1971). Technical limitations made it difficult to adapt the early mainframe game Spacewar! (1962), which performed an entire screen refresh for every little movement, so he came up with a solution to the problem: controlling each individual game element with a dedicated transistor. The rockets were essentially hardwired bitmaps that moved around the screen independently of the background, an important innovation for producing screen images more efficiently and providing the basis for sprite graphics. The earliest video games to represent player characters as human player sprites were arcade sports video games, beginning with Taito's TV Basketball, released in April 1974 and licensed to Midway Manufacturing for release in North America. Designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, he wanted to move beyond simple Pong-style rectangles to character graphics, by rearranging the rectangle shapes into objects that look like basketball players and basketball hoops. Ramtek released another sports video game in October 1974, Baseball, which similarly displayed human-like characters. The Namco Galaxian arcade system board, for the 1979 arcade game Galaxian, displays animated, multi-colored sprites over a scrolling background. It became the basis for Nintendo's Radar Scope and Donkey Kong arcade hardware and home consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System. According to Steve Golson from General Computer Corporation, the term "stamp" was used instead of "sprite" at the time. === Home systems === Signetics devised the first chips capable of generating sprite graphics (referred to as objects by Signetics) for home systems. The Signetics 2636 video processors were first used in the 1978 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System and later in the 1979 Elektor TV Games Computer. The Atari VCS, released in 1977, has a hardware sprite implementation where five graphical objects can be moved independently of the game playfield. The term sprite was not in use at the time. The VCS's sprites are called movable objects in the programming manual, further identified as two players, two missiles, and one ball. These each consist of a single row of pixels that are displayed on a scan line. To produce a two-dimensional shape, the sprite's single-row bitmap is altered by software from one scan line to the next. The 1979 Atari 400 and 800 home computers have similar, but more elaborate, circuitry capable of moving eight single-color objects per scan line: four 8-bit wide players and four 2-bit wide missiles. Each is the full height of the display—a long, thin strip. DMA from a table in memory automatically sets the graphics pattern registers for each scan line. Hardware registers control the horizontal position of each player and missile. Vertical motion is achieved by moving the bitmap data within a player or missile's strip. The feature was called player/missile graphics by Atari. Texas Instruments developed the TMS9918 chip with sprite support for its 1979 TI-99/4 home computer. An updated version is used in the 1981 TI-99/4A. === In 2.5D and 3D games === Sprites remained popular with the rise of 2.5D games (those which recreate a 3D game space from a 2D map) in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A technique called billboarding allows 2.5D games to keep onscreen sprites rotated toward the player view at all times. Some 2.5D games, such as 1993's Doom, allow the same entity to be represented by different sprites depending on its rotation relative to the viewer, furthering the illusion of 3D. Fully 3D games usually present world objects as 3D models, but sprites are supported in some 3D game engines, such as GoldSrc and Unreal, and may be billboarded or locked to fixed orientations. Sprites remain useful for small details, particle effects, and other applications where the lack of a third dimension is not a major detriment. == Systems with hardware sprites == These are base hardware specs and do not include additional programming techniques, such as using raster interrupts to repurpose sprites mid-frame.
Screen space directional occlusion
Screen space directional occlusion (SSDO) is a computer graphics technique enhancing screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) by taking direction into account to sample the ambient light (both the light coming directly at an object, as well as the light reflected off of the object directly behind it), to better approximate global illumination. SSDO was introduced by Tobias Ritschel, Thorsten Grosch, and Hans-Peter Seidel in their 2009 ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games paper Approximating dynamic global illumination in image space, which describes it as extending SSAO to directional occlusion with one diffuse indirect bounce of light; later literature notes that SSDO still suffers from common screen-space artifacts such as noise and banding. == Method == The original SSDO paper describes a two-pass screen-space approach, with one pass for direct lighting and a second pass for indirect bounces. Later literature describes SSDO as assuming a general shadowing direction that allows color bleeding and a single light bounce.
Nice (app)
Nice is a photo-sharing mobile app developed by Nice App Mobile Technology Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 北京极赞科技有限公司) in China. The app allows users to tag specific locations on images, enabling detailed labeling of items such as clothing and accessories. The company received a $36 million investment in C-round funding in 2014. Nice had 30 million registered users and 12 million active users as of late 2015. As of January 2024, it remained a popular app, the 6th most-downloaded in the iOS App Store for China. == Official website == Official website