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Going Postal
''Going Postal'' is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the 33rd book in his '' Discworld'' series, released in the United Kingdom on 25 September 2004. Unlike most of Pratchett's Discworld novels, ''Going Postal'' is divided into chapters, a feature previously seen only in Pratchett's children's books and the Science of Discworld series. These chapters begin with a synopsis of philosophical themes, in a similar manner to some Victorian novels and, notably, to Jules Verne stories. The title refers to both the contents of the novel and the idiom ' going postal'. The book was on the shortlist for both the Nebula and Locus Awards for Best (Fantasy) Novel. It would also have been shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, except that Pratchett withdrew it, as he felt stress over the award would mar his enjoyment of the Worldcon. This was the first time Pratchett had been shortlisted for either award. Plot The story takes place in Ankh-Morpork, a powerful c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terry Pratchett
Sir Terence David John Pratchett (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English author, humorist, and Satire, satirist, best known for the ''Discworld'' series of 41 comic fantasy novels published between 1983 and 2015, and for the Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, apocalyptic comedy novel ''Good Omens'' (1990), which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman. Pratchett's first novel, ''The Carpet People'', was published in 1971. The first ''Discworld'' novel, ''The Colour of Magic'', was published in 1983, after which Pratchett wrote an average of two books a year. The final ''Discworld'' novel, ''The Shepherd's Crown'', was published in August 2015, five months after his death. With more than 100 million books sold worldwide in 43 languages, Pratchett was the UK's best-selling author of the 1990s. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998 and was Knight Bachelor, knighted for services to literature in the 2009 New Year Honours. In 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugo Award For Best Novel
The Hugo Award for Best Novel is one of the Hugo Awards given each year by the World Science Fiction Society for science fiction or fantasy stories published in, or translated to, English during the previous calendar year. The novel award is available for works of fiction of 40,000 words or more; awards are also given out in the Hugo Award for Best Short Story, short story, Hugo Award for Best Novelette, novelette, and Hugo Award for Best Novella, novella categories. The Hugo Awards have been described as "a fine showcase for speculative fiction", and "the best known literary award for science fiction writing". The Hugo Award for Best Novel has been awarded annually by the World Science Fiction Society since 1953, except in 1954 and 1957. In addition, beginning in 1996, Retrospective Hugo Awards or "Retro-Hugos" have been available for works published 50, 75, or 100 years prior. Retro-Hugos may only be awarded for years after 1939 in which no awards were originally given. Retro-H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HTTP
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, where hypertext documents include hyperlinks to other resources that the user can easily access, for example by a Computer mouse, mouse click or by tapping the screen in a web browser. Development of HTTP was initiated by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989 and summarized in a simple document describing the behavior of a client and a server using the first HTTP version, named 0.9. That version was subsequently developed, eventually becoming the public 1.0. Development of early HTTP Requests for Comments (RFCs) started a few years later in a coordinated effort by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), with work later moving to the IETF. HTTP/1 was finalized and fully documented (as version 1.0) in 1996 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terry Pratchett's Going Postal
''Terry Pratchett's Going Postal'' is a two-part television film adaptation of ''Going Postal'' by Terry Pratchett, adapted by Kurti & Doyle, Richard Kurti and Bev Doyle and produced by The Mob (film company), The Mob, which was first broadcast on Sky1, and in High-definition television, high definition on Sky1, Sky1 HD, at the end of May 2010. It is the third in a series of adaptations, following ''Terry Pratchett's Hogfather'' and ''Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic''. It was announced as part of an investment of at least £10 million into adaptations of novels, including ''Chris Ryan's Strike Back'' and ''Skellig'' by David Almond. Filming began in May 2009 in Budapest. As is now traditional with The Mob's ''Discworld'' adaptations, several fans were invited to appear as extras. Plot After years of undertaking confidence tricks, Moist von Lipwig is caught by the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, and is sentenced to death under his current alias, Albert Spangler. Moist is hanged b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sky One
Sky One was a British pay television channel operated and owned by Sky Group (a division of Comcast). Originally launched on 26 April 1982 as Satellite Television, it was Europe's first satellite and non- terrestrial channel. From 31 July 1989, it became Sky One and broadcast exclusively in the United Kingdom and Ireland as British Sky Broadcasting's flagship channel. It existed until 1 September 2021, when it closed down as part of a restructuring with its EPG position taken by Sky Showcase and much of its content library moved to Sky Max. Sky One included some very popular original programmes—such as '' An Idiot Abroad'', '' Brainiac: Science Abuse'', '' The Russell Howard Hour'', '' Battlestar Galactica''—and many imported from North America, including '' 24'' (seasons 3–9, and its spinoff '' Live Another Day''), ''The X-Files'', '' Star Trek: The Next Generation'', '' Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'', '' Star Trek: Voyager'', '' Bones'' (seasons 1–6, first half), '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Killer Poke
In computer jargon, a killer poke is a method of inducing physical hardware damage on a machine or its peripherals by the insertion of invalid values, via, for example, BASIC's POKE command, into a memory-mapped control register. The term is typically used to describe a family of fairly well known tricks that can overload the analog electronics in the CRT monitors of computers lacking hardware sanity checking (notable examples being the IBM Portable and Commodore PET.) Specific examples Zuse Z1/Z3 The Z1 (1938) and Z3 (1941) computers built by Konrad Zuse contained illegal sequences of instructions which damaged the hardware if executed by accident. Commodore PET The PET-specific killer poke is connected to the architecture of that machine's video rasterizer circuits. In early PETs, writing a certain value to the memory address of a certain I/O register (POKE 59458,62) made the machine able to display text and graphics on the screen 106% faster. This was accomplishe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hacker
A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bug (computing), bugs or exploit (computer security), exploits to break into computer systems and access data which would otherwise be inaccessible to them. In a positive connotation, though, hacking can also be utilized by legitimate figures in legal situations. For example, law enforcement agencies sometimes use hacking techniques to collect evidence on criminals and other malicious actors. This could include using anonymity tools (such as a Virtual private network, VPN or the dark web) to mask their identities online and pose as criminals. Hacking can also have a broader sense of any roundabout solution to a problem, or programming and hardware development in general, and hacker culture has spread the term's broader usage to the general public even outside the pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Discworld Geography
The Discworld is the fictional world where English writer Sir Terry Pratchett's ''Discworld'' fantasy novels take place. It consists of an interstellar planet-sized disc, which sits on the backs of four huge elephants, themselves standing on the back of a world turtle, named Great A'Tuin, as it slowly swims through space. The ''Disc'' is the setting for all forty-one Discworld novels; it was influenced by world religions which feature human worlds resting on turtles, as a setting to reflect situations on Earth, in a humorous way. The Discworld is peopled mostly by the three main races of men, dwarfs and trolls. As the novels progress, other lesser known races are included, such as dragons, elves, goblins and pixies. Pratchett first explored the idea of a disc-shaped world in the novel ''Strata'' (1981). Great A'Tuin Great A'Tuin is the Giant Star Turtle (of the fictional species ''Chelys galactica'') who travels through the Discworld universe's space, carrying four giant elepha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death (Discworld)
Death is a fictional character in Terry Pratchett's ''Discworld'' series and a parody of several other Personifications of death, depictions of the Grim Reaper across Europe. He is a black-robed skeleton who usually carries a scythe and on occasion a sword for dispatching monarch, royalty. His jurisdiction is specifically the Discworld itself; he being only a minion of Azrael, the Death of all things across the Universes – in much the same way as #The Death of Rats, the Death of Rats is an infinitesimally small part of Death himself. Pratchett explores human existence through his depiction of death, which becomes more sympathetic throughout the series as it progresses. Death almost never ''homicide, kills'' anyone or anything, but — acting in the form of a psychopomp — he merely ensures that when lives come to an end, they move on to afterlife, where they believe they should go if they are sentient, which often involves a desert to be crossed. Works Death appears in ever ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semaphore Line
An optical telegraph is a line of stations, typically towers, for the purpose of conveying textual information by means of visual signals (a form of optical communication). There are two main types of such systems; the semaphore telegraph which uses pivoted indicator arms and conveys information according to the direction the indicators point, and the shutter telegraph which uses panels that can be rotated to block or pass the light from the sky behind to convey information. The most widely used system was the Chappe telegraph, which was invented in France in 1792 by Claude Chappe. It was popular in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. Chappe used the term ''télégraphe'' to describe the mechanism he had invented – that is the origin of the English word "telegraph". Lines of relay towers with a semaphore rig at the top were built within line of sight of each other, at separations of . Operators at each tower would watch the neighboring tower through a telescope ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Discworld Characters
This article contains brief biographies for prominent characters from Terry Pratchett's ''Discworld'' series. More central characters' biographies are also listed in articles relating to the organisations they belong to, main characters have their own articles. Characters are listed alphabetically by name. ''71-Hour'' Ahmed A Discworld (world)#Klatch, Klatchian warrior and bodyguard who accompanies his Prince, Khufurah, an Envoy (title), envoy on a diplomatic mission from Klatch to Ankh-Morpork in the Discworld#Bibliography, 21st ''Discworld'' novel, ''Jingo (novel), Jingo''. Ahmed belongs to a formidable but honourable warrior clan called the #D'regs, D'regs. Speaking purposefully with a heavy accent and chewing cloves he is suspected of killing the Watch's prime suspect in a botched assassination attempt on the prince; provoking Vimes and the Watch to pursue Ahmed back to Klatch. Ahmed got his nickname by killing a man guilty of poisoning a well, one hour before the cultural ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Havelock Vetinari
Lord Havelock Vetinari (, ), Lord Patrician (Primus inter pares) of the city-state of Ankh-Morpork, is a fictional character in Terry Pratchett's ''Discworld'' series. Vetinari has written an unpublished manuscript known as ''The Servant'', the Discworld version of ''The Prince'' by the Italian statesman and diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli. Fictional biography Early years Lord Vetinari was born into the extremely powerful Vetinari family (a pun on the real-life family of the Medici and on the word "veterinary") and raised by his aunt, Lady Roberta Meserole. As a youth, he enrolled in the Assassins' Guild which, apart from teaching its students how to kill other people for money, also gives them an excellent academic education. Lord Vetinari was particularly interested in the classical arts and, in flagrant defiance of the Guild's conventions of style, camouflage, though he failed his stealth examination (due to the examiner's belief that he had never attended any of his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
