History.

Research in Motion (RIM), founded in Waterloo, Ontario, first developed the Inter@ctive Pager 900, announced on September 18, 1996. The Inter@ctive Pager 900 was a clamshell-type device that allowed two-way paging. After the success of the 900, the Inter@ctive Pager 800 was created for IBM, which bought US$10 million worth of them on February 4, 1998. The next device to be released was the Inter@ctive Pager 950, on August 26, 1998. The very first device to carry the BlackBerry name was the BlackBerry 850, an email pager, released January 19, 1999. Although identical in appearance to the 950, the 850 was the first device to integrate email and the name Inter@ctive Pager was no longer used to brand the device.  The first BlackBerry device, the 850, was introduced in 1999 as a two-way pager in Munich, Germany. The name BlackBerry was coined by the marketing company Lexicon Branding. The name was chosen due to the resemblance of the keyboard's buttons to that of the drupelets that compose the blackberry fruit.  The original BlackBerry devices, the RIM 850 and 857, used the DataTAC network. In 2002, the more commonly known convergent smartphone BlackBerry was released, which supports push email, mobile telephone, text messaging, Internet faxing, Web browsing and other wireless information services.  BlackBerry gained market share in the mobile industry by concentrating on email. BlackBerry began to offer email service on non-BlackBerry devices, such as the Palm Treo, through the proprietary BlackBerry Connect software.  The original BlackBerry device had a monochrome display while newer models installed color displays. All newer models have been optimized for "thumbing", the use of only the thumbs to type on a keyboard. The Storm 1 and Storm 2 include a SureType keypad for typing. Originally, system navigation was achieved with the use of a scroll wheel mounted on the right side of device models prior to the 8700. The trackwheel was replaced by the trackball with the introduction of the Pearl series, which allowed four-way scrolling. The trackball was replaced by the optical trackpad with the introduction of the Curve 8500 series. Models made to use iDEN networks, such as Nextel, SouthernLINC, NII Holdings, and Mike also incorporate a push-to-talk (PTT) feature, similar to a two-way radio.  On January 30, 2013, BlackBerry announced the release of the Z10 and Q10 smartphones. Both models consist of touch screens: the Z10 features an all-touch design and the Q10 combines a QWERTY keyboard with touchscreen features.  During the second financial quarter of 2013, BlackBerry sold 6.8 million handsets, but was eclipsed by the sales of competitor Nokia's Lumia model for the first time.  On August 12, 2013, BlackBerry announced the intention to sell the company due to their increasingly unfavourable financial position and competition in the mobile industry. Largely due to lower than expected sales on the Z10, BlackBerry announced on September 20, 2013 that 4,500 full- and part-time positions (an estimated 40% of its operating staff) have been terminated and its product line has been reduced from six to four models. On September 23, 2013, Fairfax Financial, which owns a 10% equity stake in BlackBerry, made an offer to acquire BlackBerry for $4.7 billion (at $9.00 per share). Following the announcement, BlackBerry announced an acceptance of the offer provisionally but it would continue to seek other offers until November 4, 2013.  On November 4, 2013, BlackBerry replaced Thorsten Heins with new interim CEO John S. Chen, the former CEO of Sybase. On November 8, the BlackBerry board rejected proposals from several technology companies for various BlackBerry assets on grounds that a break-up did not serve the interest of all stakeholders, which include employees, customers and suppliers in addition to shareholders, said the sources, who did not want to be identified as the discussions were confidential. On November 13, 2013, Chen released an open message: "We are committed to reclaiming our success."  In early July 2014, the "TechCrunch" online publication published an article titled "BlackBerry Is One Of The Hottest Stocks Of 2014, Seriously", following a 50 percent rise in the company's stock, an increase that was greater than peer companies such as Apple and Google; however, an analysis of BlackBerry's financial results showed that neither revenue or profit margin were improved, but, instead, costs were markedly reduced. During the same period, BlackBerry also introduced the new Passport handset—consisting of a square screen with "Full HD-class" (1,440 x 1,440) resolution and marketed to professional fields such as healthcare and architecture—promoted its Messenger app and released minor updates for the BB10 mobile operating system.  On December 17, 2014, the BlackBerry Classic was introduced; it is meant to be more in line with the former Bold series, incorporating navigation buttons similar to the previous BlackBerry OS devices. When it was discontinued in June 2016, it was the last BlackBerry with a keyboard that dominates the front of the phone in the classic style.  In September 2015, BlackBerry officially unveiled the BlackBerry Priv, a slider, with a German made camera lens with 18 megapixels, phablet that utilizes the Android operating system with additional security and productivity-oriented features inspired by the BlackBerry operating systems. However, BlackBerry COO Marty Beard told Bloomberg that "The company's never said that we would not build another BB10 device."  On July 26, 2016 the company hinted that another model with a physical keyboard was "coming shortly". The same day, BlackBerry unveiled a mid-range Android model with only an on-screen keyboard, the BlackBerry DTEK50, powered by the then latest version of Android, 6.0, Marshmallow. (The Priv could also be upgraded to 6.0) This device featured a 5.2-inch full high-definition display. BlackBerry chief security officer David Kleidermacher stressed data security during the launch, indicating that this model included built-in malware protection and encryption of all user information. Industry observers pointed out that the DTEK50 is a re-branded version of the Alcatel Idol 4 with additional security-oriented software customizations, manufactured and designed by TCL.  In September 2016, BlackBerry Limited agreed to a licensing partnership with an Indonesian company to set up a new joint venture company called "BB Merah Putih" to "source, distribute, and market BlackBerry handsets in Indonesia".  On October 25, 2016, BlackBerry released the BlackBerry DTEK60, the second device in the DTEK series, manufactured and designed by TCL. The device features a 5.5-inch Quad-HD touch screen display running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processor with support for Quick Charge 3.0, USB Type-C, and a fingerprint sensor.  In October 2016, it was announced that BlackBerry will be working with the Ford Motor Company of Canada to develop software for the car manufacturer's connected vehicles.  In February 2017, a $20m class action lawsuit against BlackBerry was announced by the former employees of the company.  In March 2017, BB Merah Putih announced the BlackBerry Aurora, an Indonesian-made and sold device, running an operating system based on Android 7.0 out of the box.  In March 2018, it was announced that BlackBerry will be working with Jaguar Land Rover to develop software for the car manufacturer's vehicles. In June 2018, BlackBerry in partnership with TCL Mobile and Optiemus Infracom launched the KEY2 at a global launch in New York. This is the third device to sport a keyboard while running Google's Android OS.

Certification.

The BCESA, BlackBerry Certified Enterprise Sales Associate qualification, is the first of three levels

Products.

Android devices:  BlackBerry 10 devices:  BlackBerry 7 devices:  BlackBerry 6 devices:  BlackBerry 5 devices:  Blackberry 4 devices:  Blackberry 3 devices:  Blackberry 2 devices:  Blackberry 1 devices:

Hardware.

Modern LTE based phones such as the BlackBerry Z10 have a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus, a proprietary Qualcomm SOC which is based on ARMv7-A architecture, featuring two 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Krait CPU cores, and a 400 MHz Adreno 225 GPU. GSM-based BlackBerry phones incorporate an ARM 7, 9 or 11 processor. Some of the BlackBerry models (Torch 9850/9860, Torch 9810, and Bold 9900/9930) have a 1.2 GHz MSM8655 Snapdragon S2 SOC, 768 MB system memory, and 8 GB of on-board storage. Entry-level models, such as the Curve 9360, feature a Marvell PXA940 clocked at 800 MHz.  Some previous BlackBerry devices, such as the Bold 9000, were equipped with Intel XScale 624 MHz processors. The Bold 9700 featured a newer version of the Bold 9000's processor but is clocked at the same speed. The Curve 8520 featured a 512 MHz processor, while BlackBerry 8000 series smartphones, such as the 8700 and the Pearl, are based on the 312 MHz ARM XScale ARMv5TE PXA900. An exception to this is the BlackBerry

Software.

A new operating system, BlackBerry 10, was released for two new BlackBerry models (Z10 and Q10) on January 30, 2013. At BlackBerry World 2012, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins demonstrated some of the new features of the OS, including a camera which is able to rewind frame-by-frame separately of individual faces in an image, to allow selection of the best of different shots, which is then stitched seamlessly to an optimal composite, an intelligent, predictive, and adapting keyboard, and a gesture based user interface

Phones with BlackBerry email client.

Several non-BlackBerry mobile phones have been released featuring the BlackBerry

Third-party software.

Third-party software available for use on BlackBerry devices includes full-featured database management systems, which can be used to support customer relationship management clients and other applications that must manage large volumes of potentially complex data.  In March 2011, RIM announced an optional Android player that could play applications developed for the

Connectivity.

BlackBerry smartphones can be integrated into an organization's email system through a software package called BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) through version 5, and BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) as of version 10. (There were no versions 6 through 9.) Versions of BES are available for Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise and Google Apps. While individual users may be able to use a wireless provider's email services without having to install BES themselves, organizations with multiple users usually run BES on their own network. BlackBerry devices running BlackBerry OS 10 or later can also be managed directly by a Microsoft Exchange Server, using Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) policies, in the same way that an iOS or Android device can. (EAS supports fewer

BlackBerry PIN.

The BlackBerry PIN (Personal Identification Number) is an eight-character hexadecimal identification number assigned to each BlackBerry device. PINs cannot be changed manually on the device (though BlackBerry technicians are able to reset or update a PIN server-side), and are locked to each specific BlackBerry. BlackBerry devices can message each other using the PIN directly or by using the BlackBerry Messenger application. BlackBerry PINs are

Competition and financial results.

The primary competitors of the BlackBerry are Android smartphones and the iPhone. BlackBerry has struggled to compete against both and its market share has plunged since 2011, leading to speculation that it will be unable to survive as an independent going concern. However, it has managed to maintain significant positions in some markets.  Despite market share loss, on a global basis, the number of active BlackBerry subscribers has increased substantially through the years. For example, for the fiscal period during which the Apple iPhone was first released, RIM reported that they had a subscriber base of 10.5 million BlackBerry subscribers. At the end of 2008, when Android first hit the market, RIM reported that the number of BlackBerry subscribers had increased to 21 million. After the release of the Apple iPhone 5 in September 2012 RIM CEO Thorsten Heins announced that the current global subscribers is up to 80 million, which sparked a 7% jump in shares price.  However, since then, BlackBerry's global user base (meaning active accounts) has declined dramatically since its peak of 80 million in June 2012, dropping to 46 million users in September 2014. Its market share globally has also declined to less than 1 percent.  In 2011, BlackBerry shipped 43% of all smartphones to Indonesia. By April 2014 this had fallen to 3%. The decline in the Indonesian market share mirrors a global trend for the company (0.6% of North America). The retail price of 2,199,000 Indonesian Rupiah ($189) failed to give BlackBerry the boost it needed in Indonesia. The company launched the device with a discounted offer to the first 1000 purchasers, which resulted in a stampede in the capital in which several people were injured. BlackBerry lost market share in Indonesia despite the launch of the Z3 on May 13, 2014. The new device was given a worldwide launch in the city of Jakarta and came on the back of the news that Research in Motion (RIM) was to cut hardware production costs by outsourcing this to Taiwan-based Foxconn Group.  During the report of its third quarter 2015 results on December 18, 2015, the company said that approximately 700,000 handsets had been sold, down from 1.9 million in the same quarter in 2014, and down from 800,000 in Q2 of 2015. The average sale price per unit was up from $240 to $315, however. This should continue to increase with sales of the new Android Priv device which was selling at a premium price ($800 in Canada, for example). In Q3 of 2015, BlackBerry had a net loss of $89 million U.S. or 17 cents per share, but only a $15 million net loss, or three cents per share, when excluding restructuring charges and other one-time items.  Revenue was up slightly from a year earlier, at $557 million U.S. vs. $548 million, primarily because of software sales. Chief executive officer John Chen said that he expects the company's software business to grow at (14 percent) or above the market. At the time, the company was not ready to provide sales figures for the Android-based Priv handset which had been released only weeks earlier, and in only four countries at that time, but Chen offered this comment to analysts: "Depending on how Priv does... there is a chance we could achieve or get closer to break-even operating profitability for our overall device business in the (fourth) quarter".  Due to a continuous reduction in BlackBerry users, in February 2016 the Blackberry headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, slashed 35 percent of its workforce. By early 2016, Blackberry market share dropped to 0.2%. In Q4 2016, reports indicate Blackberry sold only 207,900 units—equivalent to a 0.0% market share.

Security agencies access.

Research in Motion agreed to give access to private communications to the governments of United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in 2010, and India in 2012. The Saudi and UAE governments had threatened to ban certain services because their law enforcement agencies could not decrypt messages between people of interest.  It was revealed as a part of the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures that the American and British intelligence agencies, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) respectively, have access to the user data on BlackBerry devices. The agencies are able to read almost all smartphone information, including SMS, location, e-mails, and notes through BlackBerry Internet Service, which operates outside corporate networks, and which, in contrast to the data passing through internal BlackBerry services (BES), only compresses but does not encrypt data.  Documents

Usage.

The (formerly) advanced encryption capabilities of the BlackBerry Smartphone made it eligible for use by government agencies and state forces.

Barack Obama.

Former United States president Barack Obama became known for his dependence on a BlackBerry device for communication during his 2008 Presidential campaign. Despite the security issues, he insisted

Hillary Clinton.

The Hillary Clinton email controversy is associated with Hillary

Use by government forces.

An example is the West Yorkshire Police, which has allowed the increase in the presence of police officers along the streets and a reduction in public spending, given that each officer could perform desk work directly via the mobile device, as well as in several other areas and situations. The US Federal Government has been slow to

Use by transportation staff.

In the United Kingdom, South West Trains and Northern Rail have issued BlackBerry devices to guards in order to improve the communication between control, guards and passengers.  In Canada, Toronto and many other municipalities within Canada have issued BlackBerry devices to most of its employees including but not limited to

Other users.

Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google, is a longtime BlackBerry user. Although smartphones running Google's Android mobile operating system compete with BlackBerry, Schmidt said in a 2013 interview that he uses a

BlackBerry is a line of smartphones, tablets, and services originally designed and marketed by Canadian company BlackBerry Limited (formerly known as Research In Motion, or RIM). BlackBerry products are currently formally designed, manufactured, and marketed by Chinese company TCL Communication (under the brand of BlackBerry Mobile), Indonesian company BB Merah Putih, and Indian company Optiemus Infracom for the global, Indonesian, and South Asian markets (respectively) using the BlackBerry brand under license. TCL will stop manufacturing the devices on August 31, 2020, as its contract will expire.

-{zh-cn:黑莓手机(英语:BlackBerry);zh-hk:黑莓手机(英语:BlackBerry);zh-tw:BlackBerry}-是加拿大黑莓公司的手提无线通信设备与无线服务品牌,于1999年随着无线行动服务与首支BlackBerry装置——BlackBerry 850 呼叫器——推出。BlackBerry的移动设备在台湾被暱称为-{zh-hant:黑莓机;zh-hans:黑莓机}-,其最大特色是支援Push Mail服务以及附有小型但完整的QWERTY键盘。Push Mail服务能主动将信件服务器上的新邮件传送一份到BlackBerry手持装置上,而不用使用者上网检查是否有新邮件,QWERTY键盘则方便使用者随时随地建立邮件,加上通讯录、行事历功能,使得BlackBerry成为当时最方便的行动电子邮件解决方案,因而受到商务人士喜爱与广泛采用,一些大型企业更提供黑莓机予其行政人员及其他雇员使用。


History.

Development.

The Jaguar was developed by the members of Flare Technology, a company formed by Martin Brennan and John Mathieson. The team had claimed that they could not only make a console superior to the Genesis or the Super NES, but they could also be cost-effective. Impressed by their work on the Konix Multisystem, Atari persuaded them to close Flare and form a new company called Flare II, with Atari providing the funding. Flare II initially set to work designing two consoles for Atari. One was a 32-bit architecture (codenamed "Panther"), and the other was a 64-bit system (codenamed "Jaguar"); however, work on the Jaguar design progressed faster than expected, so Atari canceled the Panther project to focus on the more promising Jaguar.  The Jaguar was unveiled in August 1993 at the Chicago Consumer Entertainment Show.

Launch.

The Jaguar was launched on November 23, 1993, at a price of $249.99, under a $500 million manufacturing deal with IBM; to prepare for this, all of Atari's other products -- the 2600, 7800, XEGS and the ST Computer line -- would be discontinued by that time. The system was initially available only in the test markets of New York City and San Francisco, under the slogan "Do the Math", claiming superiority over competing 16-bit and 32-bit systems. A U.S.-wide release followed six months later, in early 1994. "Computer Gaming World" wrote in January 1994 that the Jaguar was "a great machine in search of a developer/customer base", as Atari had to "overcome the stigma of its name (lack of marketing and customer support, as well as poor developer relations in the past)". The company "ventured late into third party software support" while competing console 3DO's "18 month public relations blitz" would result in "an avalanche of software support", the magazine reported.  The Jaguar struggled to attain a substantial user base. Atari reported that it had shipped 17,000 units as part of the system's initial test market in 1993. By the end of 1994, it reported that it had sold approximately 100,000 units.

Arrival of Saturn and PlayStation.

In early 1995, Atari announced that they had dropped the price of the Jaguar to $149.99 in order to improve its competitive nature. Atari ran early morning infomercials, with enthusiastic salesmen touting the powerful game system. These infomercials would run for most of 1995, but did not significantly sell the remaining stock of Jaguar systems.  In a 1995 interview with "Next Generation", then-CEO Sam Tramiel declared that the Jaguar was as powerful, if not more powerful, than the newly launched Sega Saturn, and slightly weaker than the upcoming PlayStation. "Next Generation" received a deluge of letters in response to Tramiel's comments, particularly his threat to bring Sony to court for price dumping if the PlayStation entered the U.S. market at a retail price below $300 and his remark that the small number of third party Jaguar games was good for Atari's profitability, which angered Jaguar owners who were already frustrated at how few games were coming out for the system.  In Atari's 1995 annual report, it noted: In addition, Atari had severely limited financial resources, and so could not create the level of marketing which has historically backed successful gaming consoles.

Decline.

By November 1995, mass layoffs and insider statements were fueling journalistic speculation that Atari had ceased both development and manufacturing for the Jaguar and was simply trying to sell off existing stock before exiting the video game industry. Although Atari continued to deny these theories going into 1996, core Jaguar developers such as High Voltage Software and Beyond Games stated that they were no longer receiving communications from Atari regarding future Jaguar projects.  In its 10-K405 SEC Filing, filed April 12, 1996, Atari informed their stockholders that its revenues had declined by more than half, from $38.7 million in 1994 to $14.6 million in 1995, then gave them the news on the truly dire nature of the Jaguar: The filing also essentially confirmed all theories that Atari had given up on the Jaguar beginning in November of 1995, and in the subsequent months were concerned chiefly with liquidating its inventory of Jaguar products. On April 8, 1996, Atari Corporation agreed to merge with JTS, Inc. in a reverse takeover, thus forming JTS Corporation. The merger was finalized on July 30.  After the Atari/JTS merger, the bulk of the remaining Jaguar inventory remained unsold; these would be finally moved out to Tiger Software, a private liquidator, on December 23, 1996. On March 13, 1998, JTS sold the Atari name and all of the Atari properties to Hasbro Interactive.

Technical issues.

Hardware Bugs.

The Jaguar's underlying hardware was crippled by a flaw in the CPU's memory controller, which prevented code execution out of system RAM. Less severe defects included a buggy UART. The memory controller flaw could have been mitigated by a mature code-development environment, to unburden the programmer from having to micromanage small chunks of code. Jaguar's development tools left much to the programmer's own implementation, as documentation was incomplete.  Design specs for the console allude to the GPU or DSP being capable of acting as a CPU, leaving the Motorola 68000 to read controller inputs. Atari's Leonard Tramiel also specifically suggested that the 68000 not be used by developers. In practice, however, many developers used the Motorola 68000 to drive gameplay logic due to the greater developer familiarity with the 68000, bugs that made using the custom chips difficult, lacking developer support tools (particularly early on), and the adequacy of the 68000 for certain types of games.

Bit count controversy.

Atari tried to play down competing consoles by proclaiming the Jaguar was the only "64-bit" system. This claim is questioned by some, because the (Motorola 68000) CPU and the "Tom" GPU executes a 32-bit instruction-set, but sends control signals to the 64-bit graphics co-processors. Atari's reasoning that the 32-bit "Tom" and "Jerry" chips work in tandem to add up to a 64-bit system was ridiculed in a mini-editorial by "Electronic Gaming Monthly", which commented that "If Sega did the math for the Sega Saturn the way Atari did the math for their 64-bit Jaguar system, the Sega Saturn would be a 112-bit monster of a machine." "Next Generation", while giving a mostly negative review of the Jaguar, maintained that it is a true 64-bit system, since the data path from the DRAM to the CPU and Tom and Jerry chips is 64 bits wide.

Technical specifications.

From the Jaguar Software Reference manual, page 1:  Jaguar is a custom chip set primarily intended to be the heart of a very high-performance games/leisure computer. It may also be used as a graphics accelerator in more complex systems, and applied to workstation and business uses. As well as a general purpose CPU, Jaguar contains four processing units. These are the Object Processor, Graphics Processor, Blitter, and Digital Sound Processor. Jaguar provides these blocks with a 64-bit data path to external memory devices, and is capable of a very high data transfer rate into external dynamic RAM.

COJAG arcade games.

Atari Games licensed the Atari Jaguar's chipset for use in its arcade games. The system, named COJAG (for "Coin-Op Jaguar"), replaced the 68000 with a 68020 or MIPS R3000-based CPU (depending on the board version), added more RAM, a full 64-bit wide ROM bus (Jaguar ROM bus being 32-bit), and optionally a hard drive (some titles such as "Freeze" are ROM only). It ran the lightgun games "Area 51" and "Maximum Force", which were released by Atari as dedicated cabinets or as the Area 51/Maximum Force combo machine. Other games ("3 On 3 Basketball"; "Fishin' Frenzy"; "Freeze"; "Vicious Circle") were developed but never released.

Atari Jaguar Duo.

The Atari Jaguar Duo was a proposed console similar to the TurboDuo and Genesis CDX. It was an attempt by Atari to combine the Atari Jaguar and Atari Jaguar CD to make a new console. A prototype model, described by journalists as resembling a bathroom scale, was unveiled at the 1995 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, but the console was cancelled before production could begin.

Peripherals.

Prior to the launch of the console in November 1993, Atari had announced a variety of peripherals and add-ons for the Jaguar to be released over the console's lifespan. This included a CD-ROM-based add-on console, a dial-up internet link with support for online gaming, a virtual reality headset, and an MPEG-2 video card. However, due to the poor sales and eventual commercial failure of the Jaguar, most of the peripherals in development were scrapped. The only peripherals and add-ons released by Atari for the Jaguar were a redesigned controller, an adapter for four players, a CD console add-on, and a link cable for local area network (LAN) gaming.  The redesigned second controller for the Jaguar, the ProController by Atari, added three more face buttons and two triggers. The controller was created in response to the criticism of the original controller that the console came with, which was said to not possess enough buttons for fighting games in particular. Sold independently, however, it was never bundled with the system after its release. A peripheral that allowed 4 controllers to be plugged into the console was also released. Dubbed the "Team Tap", it was released independently and as a bundle with "White Men Can't Jump". However, the Team Tap was compatible with "White Men Can't Jump" and "NBA Jam Tournament Edition" only. Eight player gameplay with the Team Tap peripheral is also possible if a second Team Tap is plugged into the second controller port on the console, but neither of the compatible games supports eight players. Local area network multiplayer gameplay was achieved through the use of the Jaglink Interface, which allowed two Jaguar consoles to be linked together through a modular extension and a UTP phone cable. The Jaglink was compatible with three games: "AirCars", "BattleSphere" and "Doom".  In 1994 at the CES, Atari announced that it had partnered with Phylon, Inc. to create the Jaguar Voice/Data Communicator. The unit was delayed and eventually in 1995 mass production was canceled, but not before an estimated 100 units were produced. The Jaguar Voice Modem or JVM, as it became known, utilized a 19.9kbit/s dial up modem and had the ability to answer incoming phone calls and store up to 18 phone numbers. Players were required to directly dial each other for online game play. The only Jaguar game that supports the JVM is "Ultra Vortek"; the modem is initialized in the "Ultra Vortek" start up screen by entering 911 on the key pad.

Jaguar CD.

The Atari Jaguar CD is an add-on to the Jaguar that made use of CD-ROMs to distribute games. It was released in September 1995, two years after the Jaguar's launch. Twelve games were released for the system during its manufacturing lifetime, with more being made later by homebrew developers. Each Jaguar CD unit came with a Virtual Light Machine, which displayed light patterns corresponding to music, if the user inserts an audio CD into the console. It was developed by Jeff Minter, who had created the program after experimenting with graphics during the development of "Tempest 2000". The program was deemed a spiritual successor to the Atari Video Music, a system which served a similar purpose, released in 1976.  An additional accessory for the Jaguar CD, which allowed Jaguar CD games to save persistent data such as preferences and saved games, was also released. Known as the Memory Track, it was a cartridge that contained a 128 K EEPROM, and was to be inserted into the cartridge slot on the Jaguar CD while the user played a Jaguar CD game. The program manager for the Memory Track is accessed by pushing the option button while the system is starting, and exited by pushing the * and # keys simultaneously. There were plans to make a second model of the Jaguar console that combined both the Jaguar and the Jaguar CD into one unit, a la the TurboDuo. Originally codenamed the Jaguar III, and later the Jaguar Duo, the proposed model was scrapped after the discontinuation of the Jaguar.

Jaguar VR.

A virtual reality headset compatible with the console, tentatively titled the Jaguar VR, was unveiled by Atari at the 1995 Winter Consumer Electronics Show. The development of the peripheral was a response to Nintendo's virtual reality console, the Virtual Boy, which had been announced the previous year. The headset was developed in cooperation with Virtuality, who had previously created many virtual reality arcade systems, and was already developing a similar headset for practical purposes, named Project Elysium, for IBM. The peripheral was targeted for a commercial release before Christmas 1995. However, the deal with Virtuality was abandoned in October 1995. After Atari's merger with JTS in 1996, all prototypes of the headset were allegedly destroyed. However, two working units, one low-resolution prototype with red and grey-colored graphics and one high-resolution prototype with blue and grey-colored graphics, have since been recovered, and are regularly showcased at retrogaming-themed conventions and festivals. Only one game was developed for the Jaguar VR prototype: a 3D-rendered version of the 1980 arcade game "Missile Command", entitled "Missile Command 3D", though a demo of Virtuality's "Zone Hunter" was also created for Jaguar VR demonstrations.

Unlicensed peripherals.

An unofficial expansion peripheral for the Atari Jaguar dubbed the "Catbox" was released by the Rockford, Illinois company ICD. It was originally slated to be released early in the Jaguar's life, in the second quarter of 1994, but was not actually released until mid-1995. The ICD CatBox plugs directly into the AV/DSP connectors located in the rear of the Jaguar console and provides three main functions. These are audio, video, and communications. It features six output formats, three for audio (line level stereo, RGB monitor, headphone jack with volume control) and three for video (composite, S-Video, and RGB analog component video) making the Jaguar compatible with multiple high quality monitor systems and multiple monitors at the same time. It is capable of communications methods known as CatNet and RS-232 as well as DSP pass through, allowing the user to connect two or more Jaguars together for multiplayer games either directly or with modems. The ICD CatBox features a polished stainless steel casing and red LEDs in the jaguar's eyes on the logo that indicate communications activity. An IBM AT-type null modem cable may be used to connect two Jaguars together. The CatBox is also compatible with Atari's Jaglink Interface peripheral.  An adaptor for the Jaguar that allows for WebTV access was revealed in 1998; one prototype is known to exist.

Reception.

Reviewing the Jaguar just a few weeks prior to its launch, "GamePro" gave it a "thumbs sideways". They praised the power of the hardware but criticized the controller, and were dubious of how the software lineup would turn out, commenting that Atari's failure to secure support from key third party publishers such as Capcom was a bad sign. They concluded that "Like the 3DO, the Jaguar is a risky investment – just not quite as expensive."  The Jaguar won "GameFan"'s "Best New System" award for 1993.  The small size and poor quality of the Jaguar's game library became the most commonly cited reason for its failure in the marketplace. The pack-in game "Cybermorph" was one of the first polygon-based games for consoles, but was criticized for design flaws and a weak color palette, and compared unfavorably with the SNES's "Star Fox". Other early releases like "Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy", "Raiden", and "" also received poor reviews, the latter two for failing to take full advantage of the Jaguar's hardware. Jaguar did eventually earn praise with titles such as "Tempest 2000", "Doom", and "Wolfenstein 3D". The most successful title during the Jaguar's first year was "Alien vs. Predator". Both "Alien vs. Predator" and "Tempest 2000" were named among the system's defining titles by "GamePro" in 2007. However, these occasional successes were seen as insufficient while the Jaguar's competitors were receiving a continual stream of critically acclaimed software; "GamePro" concluded their rave review of "Alien vs. Predator" by remarking "If Atari can turn out a dozen more games like AvP, Jaguar owners could truly rest easy and enjoy their purchase." In late 1995 reviews of the Jaguar, "Game Players" remarked, "The Jaguar suffers from several problems, most importantly the lack of good software." and "Next Generation" likewise commented that "thus far, Atari has spectacularly failed to deliver on the software side, leaving many to question the actual quality and capability of the hardware. With only one or two exceptions – "Tempest 2000" is cited most frequently – there have just been no truly great games for the Jaguar up to now." They further noted that while Atari is well known by older gamers, the company had much less overall brand recognition than Sega, Sony, Nintendo, or even The 3DO Company. However, they argued that with its low price point, the Jaguar might still compete if Atari could improve the software situation. They gave the system two out of five stars. "Game Players" also stated the despite being 64-bit, the Jaguar is much less powerful than the 3DO, Saturn, and PlayStation, even when supplemented with the Jaguar CD. With such a small library of games to challenge the incumbent 16-bit game consoles, Jaguar's appeal never grew beyond a small gaming audience. Digital Spy commented: "Like many failed hardware ventures, it still maintains something of a cult following but can only be considered a misstep for Atari."  In 2006 IGN editor Craig Harris rated the standard Jaguar controller as the worst game controller ever, criticizing the unwarranted recycling of the 1980s "phone keypad" format and the small number of action buttons, which he found particularly unwise given that Atari was actively trying to court fighting game fans to the system. Ed Semrad of "Electronic Gaming Monthly" commented that many Jaguar games gratuitously used all of the controller's phone keypad buttons, making the controls much more difficult than they needed to be. "GamePro"s The Watch Dog remarked, "The controller usually doesn't use the keypad, and for games that use the keypad extensively ("Alien vs. Predator", "Doom"), a keypad overlay is used to minimize confusion. But yes, it is a lot of buttons for nuttin'." Atari added more action buttons for its Pro Controller, to improve performance in fighting games in particular.

Legacy.

Telegames continued to publish games for the Jaguar after it was discontinued, and for a time was the only company to do so. On May 14, 1999, Hasbro Interactive announced that it had released all rights to the Jaguar, declaring it an open platform; this opened the doors for extensive homebrew development. Following Hasbro Interactive's announcement, Songbird Productions joined Telegames in releasing previously unfinished materials from the Jaguar's past as well as several brand new titles in order to satisfy the system's cult following. Hasbro Interactive, along with all the Atari properties, would be sold to Infogrames on January 29, 2001.  In the United Kingdom in 2001, a deal was struck between Telegames and retailer Game to bring the Jaguar to Game's retail outlets. The machine was initially sold for £29.99 brand new and software prices ranged between £9.99 for more common games such as "Doom" and "Ruiner Pinball", and £39.99 for more sought-after releases such as "Defender 2000" and "Checkered Flag". The machine had a presence in the stores until 2007 when remaining consoles were sold off for £9.99 and games were sold for as low as 97p.  Eventually, the molding plates for the Jaguar's console and cartridge casing had moved from one point to another. In 1997, Imagin Systems, a manufacturer of dental imaging equipment, purchased the molds from JTS. As with minor modification, the console molds were found to be the right size for housing their HotRod camera, with the cartridge molds being reused to create an optional memory expansion card. In December 2014, the molds were purchased from Imagin Systems by Mike Kennedy, owner of the Kickstarter funded "Retro Videogame Magazine", to propose a new crowdfunded video game console called the "Retro VGS", later rebranded the "Coleco Chameleon" after entering a licensing agreement with Coleco. The purchase of the molds from Imagin Systems was far cheaper than designing and manufacturing entirely new molds, and Kennedy described their acquisition as "the entire reason [the Retro VGS] is possible". However, the project was terminated in March 2016 following criticism of Kennedy and doubts regarding demand for the proposed console. Two "prototypes" were discovered to be fakes and Coleco withdrew from the project. After the project's termination, the molds have since been sold to Albert Yarusso, the founder of the AtariAge website.

Sega Genesis 32X.

The 32X add-on for the Sega Genesis video game console was developed in response to the Atari Jaguar. Concerning that the Saturn would not make it to market by the end of 1994, the product was conceived as an entirely new console. At the suggestion of Sega of America executive Joe Miller and his team, who stressed the importance of coming up with a quick response to the Jaguar, the console was converted into an add-on to the existing Genesis and made more powerful. Unveiled by Sega at June 1994's Consumer Electronics Show, the 32X was presented as a low-cost option for consumers looking to play 32-bit games. Its origin as a response to the Jaguar was emphasized when it launched with "Doom" in its lineup in the same month that the Jaguar version of "Doom" was released. Sega of America president Tom Kalinske touted the 32X version against the Jaguar version during an interview: "The [32X game] I like best is "Doom", that's personally one of my favorite games. And I think it's fantastic that it's the complete game. As I'm sure you know, on one of the other systems, there's no sound. I can't imagine a game without sound." Atari in turn mocked the 32X version by including a "32X Doom Mode" in "NBA Jam T.E." in which players have only front-facing sprites, reflecting the fact that the 32X version of "Doom" has only front-facing sprites.  Sega's efforts to rush the 32X to market cut into available time for game development, resulting in a weak library of forty titles that could not fully use the add-on's hardware, including Genesis ports. Discontinued in 1996 as Sega turned its focus to the Saturn, the 32X, like the Jaguar, is considered a commercial failure.

The Atari Jaguar is a home video game console that was developed by Atari Corporation and originally released in North America in November 1993.

雅达利Jaguar是雅达利公司在1993年发布的游戏机,它是雅达利在游戏机平台市场的最后一作。它的设计在机能上超越超级任天堂和Mega Drive。最初它的对手是3DO,后来则面对第五世代的游戏机。1993年11月它在美国的部分城市上市,到1994年才全美国上市。尽管被宣传为第一部64位游戏机,Jaguar的市场运作完全失败并迫使雅达利最终离开游戏机市场。尽管它的市场策略失败了,Jaguar仍不失为玩家自制游戏的一个重要平台。


Definition and methods.

The term "lex talionis" (literally meaning "the law of the claw") does not always and only refer to literal eye-for-an-eye codes of justice (see rather mirror punishment) but applies to the broader class of legal systems that specify formulate penalties for specific crimes, which are thought to be fitting in their severity. Some propose that this was at least in part intended to prevent excessive punishment at the hands of either an avenging private party or the state. The most common expression of lex talionis is "an eye for an eye", but other interpretations have been given as well. Legal codes following the principle of "lex talionis" have one thing in common: prescribed 'fitting' counter punishment for a felony. In the famous legal code written by Hammurabi, the principle of exact reciprocity is very clearly used. For example, if a person caused the death of another person, the killer would be put to death.  The simplest example is the "eye for an eye" principle. In that case, the rule was that punishment must be exactly equal to the crime. Conversely, the Twelve Tables of Rome merely prescribed particular penalties for particular crimes. The Anglo-Saxon legal code substituted payment of wergild for direct retribution: a particular person's life had a fixed value, derived from his social position; any homicide was compensated by paying the appropriate wergild, regardless of intent. Under the English Common Law, successful plaintiffs were entitled to repayment equal to their loss (in monetary terms). In the modern tort law system, this has been extended to translate non-economic losses into money as well. The meaning of the principle Eye for an Eye is that a person who has been injured by another person returns the offending action to the originator in compensation, or that an authority does so on behalf of the injured person. The exact Latin (lex talionis) to English translation of this phrase is "The law of retaliation." The root principle of this law is to provide equitable retribution.

Antecedents.

Various ideas regarding the origins of "lex talionis" exist, but a common one is that it developed as early civilizations grew and a less well-established system for retribution of wrongs, feuds and vendettas, threatened the social fabric. Despite having been replaced with newer modes of legal theory, "lex talionis" systems served a critical purpose in the development of social systems—the establishment of a body whose purpose was to enact the retaliation and ensure that this was the only punishment. This body was the state in one of its earliest forms.  The principle is found in Babylonian Law. If it is surmised that in societies not bound by the rule of law, if a person was hurt, then the injured person (or their relative) would take vengeful retribution on the person who caused the injury. The retribution might be worse than the crime, perhaps even death. Babylonian law put a limit on such actions, restricting the retribution to be no worse than the crime, as long as victim and offender occupied the same status in society. As with blasphemy or lèse-majesté (crimes against a god or a monarch), crimes against one's social betters were punished more severely.  Roman law moved toward monetary compensation as a substitute for vengeance. In cases of assault, fixed penalties were set for various injuries, although "talio" was still permitted if one person broke another's limb.

In religion.

The earliest known use of the principle appears in the Code of Hammurabi, which predates the Hebrew bible. In the Hebrew Law, the "eye for eye" was to "restrict" compensation to the value of the loss. Thus, it might be better read 'only one eye for one eye'. The idiomatic biblical phrase "an eye for an eye" in Exodus and Leviticus (, ayin tachat ayin) literally means 'an eye under/(in place of) an eye' while a slightly different phrase (עַיִן בְּעַיִן שֵׁן בְּשֵׁן, literally "eye for an eye; tooth for a tooth") is used in another passage (Deuteronomy) in the context of possible reciprocal court sentences for failed false witnesses. The passage in Leviticus states, "And a man who injures his countrymanas he has done, so it shall be done to him [namely,] fracture under/for fracture, eye under/for eye, tooth under/for tooth. Just as another person has received injury from him, so it will be given to him." (Lev. 24:19–21). For an example of being used in its regular sense of "under", see Lev. 22:27 "A bull, sheep or goat, when it is born shall remain under its mother, and from the eighth day..."  The Bible allows for "kofer" (a monetary payment) to take the place of a bodily punishment for any crime except murder. It is not specified whether the victim, accused, or judge had the authority to choose "kofer" in place of bodily punishment.

Judaism.

Isaac Kalimi explains that the "lex talionis was humanized by the Rabbis who interpreted "an eye for an eye" to mean reasonable pecuniary compensation. As in the case of the Babylonian 'lex talionis', ethical Judaism and humane Jewish jurisprudence replaces the "peshat" (literal meaning) of the written Torah. Pasachoff and Littman point to the reinterpretation of the lex talionis as an example of the ability of Pharisaic Judaism to "adapt to changing social and intellectual ideas."

Talmud.

The Talmud interprets the verses referring to "an eye for an eye" and similar expressions as mandating monetary compensation in tort cases and argues against the interpretations by Sadducees that the Bible verses refer to physical retaliation in kind, using the argument that such an interpretation would be inapplicable to blind or eyeless offenders. Since the Torah requires that penalties be universally applicable, the phrase cannot be interpreted in this manner. However, the Torah also discusses a form of direct reciprocal justice, where the phrase "ayin tachat ayin" makes another appearance. Here, the Torah discusses false witnesses who conspire to testify against another person. The Torah requires the court to "do to him as he had conspired to do to his brother". Assuming the fulfillment of certain technical criteria (such as the sentencing of the accused whose punishment was not yet executed), wherever it is possible to punish the conspirators with exactly the same punishment through which they had planned to harm their fellow, the court carries out this direct reciprocal justice (including when the punishment constitutes the death penalty). Otherwise, the offenders receive lashes.  Since there is no form of punishment in the Torah that calls for the maiming of an offender (punitary amputation) there is no case where a conspiratorial false witness could possibly be punished by the court injuring to his eye, tooth, hand, or foot. There is one case where the Torah states "...and you shall cut off her hand..." The sages of the Talmud understood the literal meaning of this verse as referring to a case where the woman is attacking a man in potentially lethal manner. This verse teaches that, although one must intervene to save the victim, one may not kill a lethal attacker if it is possible to neutralize that attacker through non-lethal injury. Regardless, there is no verse that even appears to mandate injury to the eye, tooth, or foot.

Objective of reciprocal justice in Judaism.

The Talmud discusses the concept of justice as measure-for-measure retribution ("middah k'neged middah") in the context of divinely implemented justice. Regarding reciprocal justice by court, however, the Torah states that punishments serve to remove dangerous elements from society ("...and you shall eliminate the evil from your midst") and to deter potential criminals from violating the law ("And the rest shall hear and be daunted, and they shall no longer commit anything like this evil deed in your midst"). Additionally, reciprocal justice in tort cases serves to compensate the victim (see above).  The ideal of vengeance for the sake of assuaging the distress of the victim plays no role in the Torah's conception of court justice, as victims are cautioned against even hating or bearing a grudge against those who have harmed them. The Torah makes no distinction between whether or not the potential object of hatred or a grudge has been brought to justice, and all people are taught to love their fellow Israelites.

Social hierarchy and reciprocal justice.

In Exodus 21, as in the Code of Hammurabi, the concept of reciprocal justice seemingly applies to social equals; the statement of reciprocal justice "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe" is followed by an example of a different law: if a slave-owner blinds the eye or knocks out the tooth of a slave, the slave is freed but the owner pays no other consequence. On the other hand, the slave would probably be put to death for the injury of the eye of the slave-owner.  However the reciprocal justice applies across social boundaries: the "eye for eye" principle is directly followed by the proclamation "You are to have one law for the alien and the citizen." This shows a much more meaningful principle for social justice, in that the marginalized in society were given the same rights under the social structure. In this context, the reciprocal justice in an ideal functioning setting, according to Michael Coogan, "to prevent people from taking the law into their own hands and exacting disproportionate vengeance for offenses committed against them."

Christianity.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus urges his followers to turn the other cheek: Some interpret this as an admonition not to seek legal steps for any compensation that corresponds in kind and degree to the injury. Others interpret it as Jesus simply teaching his followers not to take personal vengeance, rather than commenting on any specific legal practice. However, the Pauline Epistle to the Romans suggests that neither interpretation is correct, suggesting that vengeance is to be left to an act of God.  Christian interpretation of the Biblical passage has been heavily influenced by the Church father Augustine of Hippo. He already discussed in his "Contra Faustum", Book XIX, the points of 'fulfilment or destruction' of the Jewish law. George Robinson characterizes the passage of Exodus ("an eye for an eye") as one of the "most controversial in the Bible". According to Robinson, some have pointed to this passage as evidence of the vengeful nature of justice in the Hebrew Bible. Similarly, Abraham Bloch speculates that the "lex talionis has been singled out as a classical example of biblical harshness." Harry S. Lewis points to Lamech, Gideon and Samson as Biblical heroes who were renowned for "their prowess in executing blood revenge upon their public and private enemies." Lewis asserts that this "right of 'wild' justice was gradually limited." Stephen Wylen asserts that the lex talionis is "proof of the unique value of each individual" and that it teaches "equality of all human beings for law."

Islam.

The Quran mentions the "eye for an eye" concept as being ordained for the Children of Israel. The principle of Lex talionis in Islam is Qiṣāṣ (Arabic: قصاص) as mentioned in : "O you who have believed, prescribed for you is legal retribution ("Qisas") for those murdered – the free for the free, the slave for the slave, and the female for the female. But whoever overlooks from his brother anything, then there should be a suitable follow-up and payment to him with good conduct. This is an alleviation from your Lord and a mercy. But whoever transgresses after that will have a painful punishment." Muslim countries that use Islamic "Sharia" law, such as Iran or Saudi Arabia, apply the "eye for an eye" rule literally.

Notable criticism.

Mahatma Gandhi allegedly used this phrase in the context of universal harmony: "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." Coretta Scott King later used this phrase in the context of racial violence: "The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind."

"An eye for an eye" () or the law of retaliation () is the principle that a person who has injured another person is to be penalized to a similar degree, and the person inflicting such punishment should be the injured party. In softer interpretations, it means the victim receives the [estimated] value of the injury in compensation. The intent behind the principle was to "restrict" compensation to the value of the loss.

以眼还眼(希伯来文: "ayin takhat ayin";英文:英语:An eye for an eye)是希伯来《圣经》中常提到的术语,为防范犯罪、作恶、或恶意伤人者,意为当你令别人有什么损失,你也应有相应的损失(必要接受律法订定的制裁)。「以眼还眼,以牙还牙」为传统的同态复仇()理念。


Development.

After successful operations of the An-24T tactical transport in austere locations, interest in a version with a retractable cargo ramp increased. Initial studies for the retractable ramp were carried out as part of the projected An-40 medium transport. When given the go-ahead for the An-26 in March 1968, the Antonov OKB adapted the ramp design of the An-40 to the An-24 fuselage, resulting in the An-26. Particular attention was given to the military mission, and the majority of early An-26 production was delivered to the VTA (voyenno-transportnaya aviatsiya).  Using the majority of the An-24 airframe, with its high-set cantilevered wings, twin turboprops and stalky main undercarriage, the An-26 included military equipment, such as tip-up paratroop canvas seats, an overhead traveling hoist, bulged observation windows and parachute static line attachment cables. The An-26 made its public debut at the 27th Paris Air Show at Le Bourget where the second prototype, CCCP-26184 (c/n00202), was shown in the static aircraft park.  The An-26 is also manufactured without a license agreement in China by the Xian Aircraft factory as the Y-14, later changed to be included in the Xian Y7 series.

Operational history.

The An-26 has a secondary bomber role with underwing bomb racks. The racks are attached to the fuselage in front of and behind the rear landing gear. In the bombing role it was extensively used by the Vietnam People's Air Force during the Cambodian–Vietnamese War and Sudanese Air Force during the Second Sudanese Civil War and the War in Darfur. Also Russian Forces train with the An-26 as a bomber.

The Antonov An-26 (NATO reporting name: Curl) is a twin-engined turboprop civilian and military transport aircraft, designed and produced in the Soviet Union from 1969 to 1986.

安托诺夫 安-26(,北约命名:卷发Curl)是苏联开发,由安托诺夫An-24的架构改良出的一款双螺旋桨引擎军民通用运输机,生产于1969年-1985年间,计生产1403架,中华人民共和国也以An-26设计制造出运-7运输机。


Synopsis.

The handsome but brutal tribune M. Vinicius, returning to Rome from service in the east, falls in love with "Lygia", a hostage daughter of the Lygian king, who is being raised in the house of Aulus Plautius (a general of British fame), and his wife Pomponia Graecina, who is secretly a Christian. Petronius uses his influence with Nero to have Lygia seized from the Plautius' and given to Vinicius; but the plan misfires when Caesar, during her brief custody on the Palatine (in which she meets Acte), invites her to a riotous feast, where Lygia, inculcated with Christianity by Pomponia Graecina, is horrified by Vinicius' drunken advances, and the degeneracy of the Roman court. She commands Ursus (her Lygian bodyguard, and also a convert) to organize a band of Christians to waylay her chariot while she is being conveyed the following day from the Palatine to Vinicius' house; the plan succeeds, and Lygia disappears.  Vinicius is now driven to distraction with the thwarting of his obsessive desire; Petronius, taking pity on him, secures him the services of the cadging Greek philosopher Chilo Chilonis; from the sign of a fish which Lygia had drawn Vinicius in the house of Plautius Chilo discovers that Lygia is Christian; and since a vigilant watch on the gates has revealed that she is still in the city, Chilo undertakes to disguise as a Christian to worm out the secret of her hiding-place. Hope revives when Chilo recognizes Ursus in Urban, a common Christian laborer. When he learns that the entire Christian community in the city is to meet at night in Ostrienum outside the city walls, to hear Peter the Apostle (lately arrived from Galilee), Vinicius insists on accompanying Chilo to the event in disguise, hoping to see Lygia; although momentarily impressed by Peter's recollections of Christ, Vinicius forgets all when he spots Lygia in the crowd; together with Chilo and the powerful athlete Croton, originally brought along in case of danger, he follows Lygia and Ursus from the meeting to a plebeian insula in the trans-Tiber region of the city; he and Croton enter the building to retrieve Lygia, but Ursus strangles Croton to death and nearly kills Vinicius, sparing him only at Lygia's intercession; the cowardly Chilo flees.  Here Vinicius is magnanimously nursed to health by Lygia and her fellow Christians, who to his immense surprise, have forgiven him all; he is further shocked when, on his summoning Chilo (by agreement with the Christians) to communicate to his household that the cause of his disappearance is a sudden trip to Beneventum, it emerges that Glaucus, the Christian doctor who is attending Vinicius, had been betrayed by Chilo to bandits during a previous period of his unscrupulous adventures; whereupon with Peter's approval Glaucus forgives him all. Meanwhile, when Lygia realizes, while acting as his nurse, that she is herself deeply in love with Vinicius, she confesses to Peter, who while affirming that her love is not sinful, says she cannot marry Vinicius as long as he is not a Christian. Lygia changes her residence, vanishing a second time.  A Vinicius restored to health returns to his role in society as a patrician and Augustian (or courtier of Caesar). Yet although he cannot bring himself to embrace Christianity, he is now disgusted with the profligacy of Nero's court, and begins to treat his slaves with more mercy; and even earns the enmity of the empress Poppaea Sabina by rejecting her advances. At this juncture Chilo reappears, with information of Lygia's new hideout, urging him to surround the house with troops and reclaim her; but Vinicius, changed by his contact with the Christians, rejects the temptation, and has Chilo scourged for his ingratitude before forcing him to promise never to spy on the Christians again; Chilo privately swears revenge. Vinicius repairs unattended to the house indicated by Chilo, and lays before the apostles Paul and Peter his unchanging love for Lygia and his altered ways, promising to convert if Paul will undertake to instruct him in the faith; overjoyed, the apostles summon in Lygia, who confesses her love for him; with the apostles' blessings the two are engaged.  Soon after, Nero retires for recreation to Antium, where Vinicius, as his courtier, is forced to attend him, accompanied however with Paul; in Antium Nero, who is composing a song on the fall of Troy, repeatedly complains that he has never seen a real city burning; but even his degraded courtiers are shocked when messengers break into the banqueting hall one night with information that Rome is aflame. Vinicius dashes madly on horseback to the city, in tortured anxiety for Lygia; the trans-Tiber region of the city where Lygia resides has not yet been reached by the fire; with the help of Chilo who now reappears (having broken his promise not to spy on the Christians), he finds Lygia and Peter sheltering in a quarry-man's hut outside the city; here, with outraged multitudes rioting outside, and gladiators and escaped slaves killing and pillaging, Vinicius (who has meanwhile been converted by Paul) vows never to desert them, and Peter baptizes him on the spot.  Nero meantime returns to Rome, where he sings his poem before the outraged multitude, which believes him to be the author of the calamity; Petronius however restores the situation by riding into the crowd (who idolize him for his reputed humanity), and promising them extraordinary gifts of "bread and circuses" in the name of Caesar. But as Nero remains unpopular, Tigellinus, Caesar's praetorian Prefect, advocates finding a scapegoat for the disaster; in the middle of the convocation, in which various candidates are suggested (including Tigellinus himself, who rebuffs the suggestion with a vailed threat) Tigellinus is called away, and returns to with the suggestion that the Christians fulfill that office; it emerges that Chilo, still furious from his flogging by Vinicius, has come forward to accuse them of the crime; Petronius, Tigellinus' longstanding rival for influence over Nero, protests, but is overridden by Poppaea, who hates Lygia for her beauty, and Vinicius for spurning her. Petronius leaves with the certainty that he has irrecoverably lost his influence over Nero, and is therefore almost certainly doomed to death.  Immediately on returning home, Petronius warns Vinicius of Lygia's danger; but before he reaches her, she is seized by soldiers, informed of her hiding place by Chilo; with the latter's contrivance, multitudes of other Christians are imprisoned, and Nero plans a series of games in the arena featuring their deaths to divert unpopularity from himself. During a whole series of ghastly exhibitions, including devouring by wild beasts, butchery by gladiators, and finally burning them on crosses by nighttime to illuminate a luxurious banquet in Caesar's gardens open to all Rome, Vinicius attempts unsuccessfully to rescue Lygia from prison. Meanwhile, Chilo who since informing has been raised to the rank of an Augustinian suffers the pains of a tormented conscience while watching the undeserved sufferings of the Christians in the arena, though they had repeatedly pardoned him for the severest crimes; at the last show, when he encounters Glaucus yet alive on one of the crosses, who again forgives him, Chilo breaks down, and accuses Caesar before the crowd of being the incendiary; the court scatters, and Paul emerges from the confusion to promise him salvation if he perseveres in his repentance; this gives him the fortitude to later die unperjured in the arena when he refuses to retract his accusation of the emperor. Meanwhile, the final games come around, in which Lygia and Ursus are exposed in the arena to an aurochs; however, Ursus with his preternatural strength breaks the beast's neck; the crowd, glutted with the slaughter of innocents, demands of Caesar to spare the pair, and Nero acquiesces out of cowardice; Vinicius and Lygia marry and settle on his estates in Sicily, where they live unprosecuted as Christians.  The rest of the novel relates the historical events of Peter's martyrdom (“Quo vadis, Domine?”), Petronius’ resigned death in the aftermath of Piso's conspiracy, and concludes with a vision of retribution in the death of Nero based on Suetonius.

Origin of the term.

""Quo vadis, Domine?"" is Latin for "Where are you going, Lord?" and appears in Chapter 69 of the novel in a retelling of a story from the apocryphal Acts of Peter, in which Peter flees Rome but on his way meets Jesus and asks him why he is going to Rome. Jesus says, "If thou desertest my people, I am going to Rome to be crucified a second time", which shames Peter into going back to Rome to accept martyrdom.

Historical events.

Sienkiewicz alludes to several historical events and merges them in his novel, but some of them are of doubtful authenticity.

Similarities with Barrett play.

Playwright-actor-manager Wilson Barrett produced his successful play "The Sign of the Cross" in the same year as publication of "Quo vadis?" started. The play was first performed 28 March 1895. Several elements in the play strongly resemble those in "Quo Vadis". In both, a Roman soldier named Marcus falls in love with a Christian woman and wishes to "possess" her. (In the novel, her name is Lycia, in the play she is Mercia.) Nero, Tigellinus and Poppea are major characters in both the play and novel, and in both, Poppea lusts after Marcus. Petronius, however, does not appear in "The Sign of the Cross", and the ending of the play diverges from that of "Quo Vadis".

Adaptations.

A successful stage version of the novel by Stanislaus Stange was produced in 1900. Film versions of the novel were produced in 1901, 1913 and 1924. A 1951 version directed by Mervyn LeRoy was nominated for eight Academy Awards. The novel was also the basis for a 1985 mini-series starring Klaus Maria Brandauer as Nero and a 2001 Polish mini-series directed by Jerzy Kawalerowicz. It was satirized as the quintessential school play gone horribly awry in "Shivering Shakespeare", a 1930 Little Rascals short by Hal Roach.  Jean Nouguès composed an opera based on the novel to a libretto by Henri Caïn; it was premiered in 1909. Feliks Nowowiejski composed an oratorio based on the novel, performed for the first time in 1907, and then his most popular work.

Ursus series (1960–1964).

Following Buddy Baer's portrayal of Ursus in the classic 1951 film "Quo Vadis", Ursus was used as a superhuman Roman-era character who became the protagonist in a series of Italian adventure films made in the early 1960s.  When the Hercules film craze hit in 1959, Italian filmmakers were looking for other muscleman characters similar to Hercules whom they could exploit, resulting in the nine-film Ursus series listed below. Ursus was referred to as a "Son of Hercules" in two of the films when they were dubbed in English (in an attempt to cash in on the then-popular Hercules craze), although in the original Italian films, Ursus had no connection to Hercules whatsoever. In the English-dubbed version of one Ursus film (retitled "Hercules, Prisoner of Evil"), Ursus was referred to throughout the entire film as Hercules.  There were a total of nine Italian films that featured Ursus as the main character, listed below as follows: Italian title/ English translation of the Italian title (American release title);

Recognition.

In the small church of "Domine Quo Vadis", there is a bronze bust of Henryk Sienkiewicz. It is said that Sienkiewicz was inspired to write his novel "Quo Vadis" while sitting in this church.

External links.

, translated by Jeremiah Curtin (plain text and HTML)

Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero, commonly known as "Quo Vadis", is a historical novel written by Henryk Sienkiewicz in Polish.

《你往何处去》()是1905年诺贝尔文学奖得主显克维支的历史小说,记述罗马帝国尼禄时期的一段历史,描写了在尼禄王统治下的社会。


History.

References to service animals date at least as far back as the mid-16th century. The second line of the popular verse alphabet "A was an Archer" is most commonly "B was a Blind-man/Led by a dog". In Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 19th-century verse novel "Aurora Leigh", the title character remarks, "The blind man walks wherever the dog pulls / And so I answered."  The first service animal training schools were established in Germany during World War I, to enhance the mobility of returning veterans who were blinded in combat. Interest in service animals outside of Germany did not become widespread until Dorothy Harrison Eustis, an American dog breeder living in Switzerland, wrote a first-hand account about a service animal training school in Potsdam, Germany, that was published in "The Saturday Evening Post" in 1927. That same year, United States Senator Thomas D. Schall of Minnesota was paired with a service animal imported from Germany, who was trained by the owner of LaSalle Kennels: Jack Sinykin of Minnesota.  The service animal movement did not take hold in America until Nashville resident Morris Frank returned from Switzerland after being trained with one of Eustis's dogs, a female German shepherd named Buddy. Frank and Buddy embarked on a publicity tour to convince Americans of the abilities of service animals and the need to allow people with service animals access to public transportation, hotels, and other areas open to the public. In 1929, Eustis and Frank co-founded The Seeing Eye school in Nashville, Tennessee (relocated in 1931 to New Jersey).  The first service animals in Great Britain were German shepherds. Four of these first were Flash, Judy, Meta, and Folly, who were handed over to their new owners, veterans blinded in World War I, on 6 October 1931 in Wallasey, Merseyside. Judy's new owner was Musgrave Frankland. In 1934, The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association in Great Britain began operation, although their first permanent trainer was a Russian military officer, Captain Nikolai Liakhoff, who moved to the UK in 1933.  Elliott S. Humphrey, an animal breeder who trained the first guide dogs for the blind used in the United States. Mr. Humphrey was hired to breed German shepherds at a center in Switzerland that had been set up by Dorothy Harrison Eustis of Philadelphia and began the work that led to the Seeing-Eye Dog program.  The first dogs produced at the center, known as Fortunate Fields, were used for military and police work and for tracking missing persons. Then Mr. Humphrey trained German shepherds to guide the blind.  The Germans had developed a guide dog program during World War I, but Mr. Humphrey devised different procedures and it is his that are followed in the United States

Research.

Important studies on the behavior and training methods of service animals were done in the 1920s and 1930s by Jakob von Uexküll and Emanuel Georg Sarris. They studied the value of service animals and introduced advanced methods of training. There have also been important studies into the discrimination experienced by people that use service and assistance animals.

Breeds.

Guide dog breeds are chosen for temperament and trainability. At the moment Golden Retrievers, Labradors, Standard Poodles and Golden Retriever/Labrador crosses are most likely to be chosen by service animal facilities.  The most popular breed used globally today is the Labrador Retriever. This breed has a good range of size, is easily kept due to its short coat, is generally healthy and has a gentle but willing temperament. Crosses such as the Goldador (Golden Retriever/Labrador), combine the sensitivity of the Golden Retriever and the tolerance of the Labrador Retriever and Labradoodles (Labrador/Poodles are bred to help reduce allergens as all breeds shed but levels vary) are also common.  Some schools, such as the Guide Dog Foundation, have added Standard Poodles to their breed registry. Although German Shepherds were once a common breed used for guide work, many schools have discontinued using these dogs due to the skills and unwavering leadership role required by the handler to keep the breed active and non-destructive.

Accessibility.

Despite regulations or rules that deny access to animals in restaurants and other public places, in many countries, service animals are protected by law and therefore may accompany their handlers most places that are open to the public. Laws and regulations vary worldwide:

Discrimination.

Because some schools of thought in Islam consider dogs in general to be unclean, Muslim taxi drivers and store owners have sometimes refused to accommodate customers who have service animals, which has led to discrimination charges against them. However, in 2003 the Islamic Sharia Council, a British organization that provides non-binding guidance on interpreting Islamic religious law, ruled that the ban on dogs does not apply to those used for guide work.

Benefits of owning a guide dog.

Studies show owning a pet or therapy animal offers positive effects psychologically, socially, and physiologically. Guide dogs especially come with a variety of benefits and help in many ways. They give a blind person more confidence, friendship, and security. Blind people who use service animals have increased confidence in going about day-to-day life and are comforted by a constant friend. Companionship offered by a service dog helps reduce anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Because animals offer support, security, and companionship, stress is reduced, which in turn improves cardiovascular health. "A number of studies identify pet ownership as a factor in improved recovery from illness and in improved health in general".  Guide dogs make it easier to get around, resulting in the person getting more exercise or walking more. People are more willing to go places and feel a sense of independence. Meeting people and socializing is easier, and people are more likely to offer a blind person help when there is a service animal present. The animals may also lead to increased interaction with other people. Animals are seen as "ice breakers" to a conversation with something to talk about. They are more advantageous than long canes when one is in an unfamiliar place. The animal directs the right path, instead of poking around wondering if you might bump into something. Guide dogs make the experience of the unknown more relaxing. Getting from point A to point B using a guide dog is much faster and safer.  Owners of guide dogs share a special bond with their animal. Many report that the animal is a member of the family, and go to their animal for comfort and support. The animal isn't seen as a working animal, but more as a loyal friend. However it is important to remember that guide dogs are working animals and should not be distracted or treated as a pet while they are working.

Guide dogs (colloquially known in the USA as seeing eye dogs) are assistance dogs trained to lead blind and visually impaired people around obstacles. Although dogs can be trained to navigate various obstacles, they are red–green color blind and incapable of interpreting street signs. The human does the directing, based on skills acquired through previous mobility training. The handler might be likened to an aircraft's navigator, who must know how to get from one place to another, and the dog is the pilot, who gets them there safely. In several countries guide dogs, along with most service and hearing dogs, are exempt from regulations against the presence of animals in places such as restaurants and public transportation.

导盲犬是一种工作犬,其主要工作是代替视障人士的双眼,为他们领路,被称为“盲人的第二双眼睛”牠们带路时是给盲人以障碍物和方向的提示,帮助盲人抵达目的地,而不是直接将盲人带往指定目的地。盲人在路上会使用口令命令导盲犬直走、右转或左转,这段路途,导盲犬就负责不让主人碰撞和摔倒,或当路面情况突变时引领主人避开障碍物。这就要求导盲犬的使用者必须具备稳定及良好的定向行走能力。


History.

The French geographer Roger Brunet, who observed a division between "active" and "passive" spaces, developed the concept of a West European "backbone" in 1989. He made reference to an urban corridor of industry and services stretching from northern England to northern Italy. The name "Blue Banana" was dually coined by Jacques Chérèque, and an artist adding a graphic to an article by Josette Alia in "Le Nouvel Observateur". The color blue referred to either the flag of the European Community, or the blue collars of factory workers in the region.  Brunet saw the "European Backbone" as the development of historical precedents, e.g. trade routes, or as the consequence of an accumulation of industrial capital. In his analysis, Brunet excluded the Paris urban area and other French conurbations because of French economic insularity. His aim was a greater economic integration in Europe, but he felt that France had lost this connection by the 17th century as a result of its persecution of Huguenots and centralisation in Paris. Later versions do, however, include Paris.  In 1991, in the context of a study on behalf of the European Commission in support of its Regional Policy, researchers criticized the idea of the Blue Banana as a desirable formation, but not its empirical reality, identifying it as the result of regional competition in Europe. Furthermore, their diagram of the Blue Banana had more of a curve, still including Northern Italy, but ending at Barcelona. It also included Paris, and had the Anglo-Scottish border as its northern stem. A study of the history of the Blue Banana as a concept refers to the Commission's study as a mistaken rejection of the Blue Banana from Brunet's original conception. From the research on the Commission's behalf, the Blue Banana represented a developed core at the expense of the periphery, whereas Brunet empirically viewed the Blue Banana as a region of development at Paris's periphery, beyond the French borders.

The Blue Banana (also known as the European Megalopolis or the Liverpool–Milan Axis) is a discontinuous corridor of urbanisation spreading over Western and Central Europe, with a population of around 111 million. The concept was developed in 1989 by RECLUS, a group of French geographers managed by Roger Brunet.

蓝香蕉,又名热香蕉、欧洲大都市带、曼彻斯特-米兰轴或欧洲的骨干,是指欧洲中西部人口较为密集的地带,约有1.1亿人(欧洲人口约为7.3亿)。蓝香蕉区分布自意大利北部至英格兰西北部。这一地带包括了欧洲甚至世界人口、金钱或工业最集中的地区。这一概念是1989年,由法国地理学家罗歇·布吕内(Roger Brunet)提出的。“蓝”是指欧盟旗的蓝颜色抑或是指这一区域里的蓝领工人,而“香蕉”是指这一区域的形状。。


Early life and education.

Kaufman was born in New York City to a Jewish family on November 19, 1958, the son of Helen and Myron Kaufman. He grew up in Massapequa, New York, before moving to West Hartford, Connecticut, where he graduated from high school. In high school, Kaufman was in the drama club, performing in numerous productions before landing the lead role in a production of "Play It Again, Sam" during his senior year.  After high school graduation, Kaufman attended Boston University before transferring to New York University, where he studied film. While attending NYU, Kaufman met Paul Proch, with whom he wrote many unproduced scripts and plays.

Career.

Early work and television (1983–1997).

Between 1983 and 1984, Kaufman and Proch wrote comedic articles and spoofs for "National Lampoon". His work included parodies of Kurt Vonnegut and the X-Men. Kaufman and Proch tried to get their screenplays produced, sending them to many people in the film industry. The only response the two ever received was a supportive letter from Alan Arkin about their screenplay "Purely Coincidental". In hope of finding a talent agent he began to write spec scripts for television series such as "Married... with Children", "Newhart", "It's Garry Shandling's Show" and "The Simpsons". While pursuing his writing career he began working odd jobs in customer service to support himself and his wife, Denise.  In 1991, one of Kaufman's spec scripts finally got attention and he gained a talent agent. The agent suggested Kaufman move from Minneapolis to Los Angeles in search of more job prospects. He moved to Los Angeles alone for two months interviewing for a variety of different television writing jobs. The only offer he got was a Comedy Central series titled "Access America", hosted by actor Fred Willard, which coincidentally was being filmed in Minneapolis. Kaufman was prepared to accept the job and move back to Minneapolis until he was offered a job by David Mirkin writing for the second season of his and Chris Elliott's sitcom "Get a Life", starring Elliott. He wrote two episodes of "Get a Life" before its cancellation in 1992. At first Kaufman found the experience of working on a writing staff nerve-wracking and did not speak in the writer's room for the first few weeks. After his work was well received by other members of the staff, Kaufman overcame his timidity and became more susceptible to showing others his work.  After "Get a Life"'s cancellation, Kaufman pursued work on series such as "Seinfeld", "The Larry Sanders Show", "The Simpsons" and "Mr. Show", but to no avail. He continued to work on other comedic series: Fox's sketch comedy show "The Edge", "The Trouble with Larry" and "Ned and Stacey", the last of which he also produced. The most notable series he worked on in this period was "The Dana Carvey Show", which featured writers and performers such as Louis C.K., Robert Smigel, Greg Daniels, Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell. On all these series Kaufman struggled to keep his material from being adulterated or not produced at all, due to his unconventional writing and his quiet nature.  Kaufman also wrote some pilot scripts of his own, but none of them were produced. These included two pilots for Disney, "Depressed Roomies" and "Rambling Pants" (the former a surrealist take on the "buddy sitcom" and the latter focused on the adventures of a time-travelling poet named Pants) and a pilot for HBO, "In Limbo", a naturalistic look at a romantic relationship devoid of the usual tropes of romantic films.

Move to films and critical acclaim (1999–2004).

Kaufman first came to mainstream notice as the writer of "Being John Malkovich", directed by Spike Jonze, earning an Academy Award nomination for his effort and winning a BAFTA. He wrote the script on spec in 1994, sending it to many companies and studios, all of which turned it down. The script eventually reached Francis Ford Coppola, who passed it on to his then-son-in-law Jonze, who agreed to direct the film.  After the success of "Being John Malkovich", another of Kaufman's screenplays was produced: "Human Nature", which was directed by Michel Gondry and produced by Kaufman and Jonze.  Kaufman and Jonze reunited yet again as the screenwriter and director of "Adaptation", which earned him another Academy Award nomination and his second BAFTA. "Adaptation" featured a fictionalized version of Kaufman and his fictional brother, Donald, who is credited as writer of the film along with Kaufman. The idea came to Kaufman while attempting to adapt Susan Orlean's book "The Orchid Thief" into film. Struggling with writer's block, Kaufman turned the script into an exaggerated account of his struggles with adapting the screenplay.  Kaufman wrote the screenplay for "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", a biopic based on the "unauthorized autobiography" of Chuck Barris, the creator of such popular game shows as "The Dating Game" and host of "The Gong Show". The film focuses on Barris's claim to have been a CIA hit man. It was George Clooney's directorial debut. Kaufman criticized Clooney for making drastic alterations to the script without consulting him (instead, Clooney consulted Barris). Kaufman said in an interview with William Arnold: "The usual thing for a writer is to deliver a script and then disappear. That's not for me. I want to be involved from beginning to end. And these directors [Gondry and Jonze] know that, and respect it."  "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", released in 2004, was Kaufman's second pairing with director Michel Gondry. Kaufman won his first Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and third BAFTA for the film together with Gondry and French artist Pierre Bismuth. The trio also received the prestigious PEN American Center 2005 prize for screenplay for the film. David Edelstein described the film in "Slate" as ""The Awful Truth" turned inside-out by Philip K. Dick, with nods to Samuel Beckett, Chris Marker, John Guare—the greatest dramatists of our modern fractured consciousness. But the weave is pure Kaufman."

Directorial work and writer for hire (2005–2014).

After agreeing to participate in Carter Burwell's "Theater of the New Ear", a double bill "sound play", Kaufman wrote and directed the audio play "Hope Leaves the Theater", while the other play in the production, "Sawbones", was written and directed by the Coen Brothers. "Hope Leaves the Theater" follows a middle-aged woman, dissatisfied with her life and relationships, watching a play-within-the-play, and featured performances by Hope Davis, Peter Dinklage and Meryl Streep. "Theater of the New Ear" debuted in April 2005 at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York. Due to scheduling conflicts, later productions of "Theater of the New Ear" did not feature the Coens' play, replacing it with "Anomalisa", which Kaufman wrote under the pseudonym "'Francis Fregoli". "Anomalisa" centers around a man (David Thewlis) who perceives everyone in the world to be the same person (Tom Noonan) until he meets an exception (Jennifer Jason Leigh).  Kaufman made his directorial film debut with the postmodern film "Synecdoche, New York", starring an ensemble cast led by Philip Seymour Hoffman. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008. The idea for the film came when Kaufman and Spike Jonze were approached to direct a horror film. Rather than make a conventional horror film, the two agreed to have the film deal with things they found frightening, such as mortality and life's brevity. Kaufman decided to direct the film after Jonze left the project to direct "Where the Wild Things Are" instead. The film premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where it split critics, with some calling it the best film of the year and others finding it pretentious. In the years since its release it has appeared on multiple lists ranking the best films of the 21st century. The film's poor box office resulted in Kaufman finding it difficult to gain funding for scripts in which he has attached himself to as director.  Kaufman was slated to write and direct a film with the working title "Frank or Francis". Few details have been confirmed about the plot except that it is a musical comedy about internet anger culture and was set to star Jack Black, Nicolas Cage, Steve Carell, Kevin Kline, Catherine Keener, Paul Reubens, Jackie Weaver and Elizabeth Banks. In July 2012, Black said that funding for the project had fallen through, as the studio was unsure about its chances for success after the financial failure of "Synecdoche, New York". Although the future of the project is not certain, Kaufman says "It could still happen. It would have to be reinvented, though. We had a whole cast and we were headed into pre-production. So, I’d have to get people back and who knows if they would be interested anymore. But at this point, we don’t have any money, so that’s a secondary concern."  Trying to make a return to television when the funding for "Frank or Francis" fell through, Kaufman sold a series to HBO in the May of 2012 with Catherine Keener attached to star, but the series did not get past the scripting stage. Kaufman also directed and wrote a pilot for FX titled "How and Why" in 2014. The plot was described as being about a "man (played by John Hawkes) who can explain how and why a nuclear reactor works but is clueless about life". Along with Hawkes, the pilot co-starred Michael Cera, Sally Hawkins, Catherine Keener and Tom Noonan. FX decided to not pick up the pilot.  While struggling to get his directorial work made, Kaufman continued to work as a writer for hire, writing numerous unproduced screenplays. These included a satire set around a group of global leaders, to be directed by Spike Jonze, with Joaquin Phoenix in the lead role; an adaptation of George Saunders's book "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline", to be directed by Ben Stiller; an adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse Five", to be directed by Guillermo del Toro; and an adaptation of Arthur Herzog's novel "IQ 83" with Steve Carell.  In April 2012, Kaufman was hired to adapt Patrick Ness's "Chaos Walking" book series, of which he wrote the first draft. The film is scheduled to be released in 2021; Kaufman will share writing credit with John Lee Hancock and Ness, both of whom worked on the script after Kaufman's draft.

Continued directing and debut novel (2015–present).

Dino Stamatopoulos, a former colleague of Kaufman's from "The Dana Carvey Show", became interested in adapting Kaufman's "Anomalisa" play script into a stop motion animated film. With Kaufman's permission, Stamatopoulos turned to the crowdfunding website Kickstarter to fund the film. The Kickstarter page was set up in August 2012 and by the time funding had ended $406,237 was pledged. The rest of the $8 million budget was funded by the film's production company, Starburns Industries. Kaufman co-directed the film with Duke Johnson, who had previous experience in stop motion filmmaking, and the original cast of the play production returned to reprise their roles. It had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on September 4, 2015, receiving universal acclaim from critics. The film went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, but like "Synecdoche", it did poorly at the box office.  In January 2018, it was announced that Kaufman was working on writing and directing an adaptation of Iain Reid's 2016 novel "I'm Thinking of Ending Things". In December 2018, it was announced that Brie Larson and Jesse Plemons were signed to co-star as the leads; the film was described as "the story of a woman’s trip to a family farm that leads to an unexpected detour leaving her stranded, [and] a twisted mix of palpable tension, psychological frailty and sheer terror ensues." The project begun filming in March 2019, with Jessie Buckley having replaced Larson, and Toni Collette and David Thewlis joining the cast.  Kaufman's debut novel, "Antkind", is due for release in 2020. Kaufman said in 2016 that the novel was being written so as to be unfilmable, and is itself about "an impossible movie".

Themes and influences.

Kaufman's works explore such universal themes as identity crisis, mortality, and the meaning of life through a metaphysical or parapsychological framework. While his work resists labels, it is sometimes described as surrealist. He sometimes includes fictionalized "facts" about his life in his work, notably "Adaptation." and "Hope Leaves the Theater".  Apes recur in Kaufman's work: in "Being John Malkovich", Lotte has a pet chimp named Elijah; in "Human Nature", Puff was raised as an ape; in "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", Penny dreams about an ape; and in "Adaptation", the original deus ex machina was a swamp ape.  Some writers and directors Kaufman has named as favorites of his, or as influences, are Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Stanisław Lem, Flannery O'Connor, Shirley Jackson, Italo Svevo, David Lynch, Lars von Trier, Woody Allen and Patricia Highsmith.

Personal life.

Kaufman lived and worked for a time during the late 1980s in Minneapolis, answering calls about missing newspapers at the "Star Tribune", before moving to Los Angeles.  He lives in Pasadena, California, with his wife Denise and their child.

Charles Stuart Kaufman (; born November 19, 1958) is an American screenwriter, producer, director and novelist. He wrote the films "Being John Malkovich" (1999), "Adaptation" (2002), and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004). He made his directorial debut with "Synecdoche, New York" (2008), which film critic Roger Ebert called "the best movie of the decade" in 2009. Further directorial work include the stop motion animated film "Anomalisa" (2015) and the upcoming "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" (2020).

查理·卡夫曼(英语:Charlie Kaufman,1958年-11月1日)是一名美国编剧、监制及导演,作品多不合常规却大受好评,曾多次入围大型影视奖项的最佳原创剧本奖或改编剧本奖,包括奥斯卡金像奖及BAFTA,更于2003年凭《无痛失恋》赢得奥斯卡最佳原创剧本奖。代表作有《傀儡人生》、《何必偏偏玩谢我》及《无痛失恋》等。


Early life.

Ball was born in Marietta, Georgia, to Frank and Mary Ball, respectively an aircraft inspector and a homemaker. His older sister, Mary Ann, was killed in a car accident when Ball was 13; he was in the passenger seat at the time. He attended high school in Marietta before going to college at the University of Georgia and Florida State University. Ball graduated from Florida State in 1980 with a degree in theater arts.  After college, he began work as a playwright at the General Nonsense Theater Company in Sarasota, Florida.

Film and television career.

Ball broke into television as a writer and story editor on the situation comedies "Grace Under Fire" and "Cybill".  Ball has written two films, "American Beauty" (1999) and "Towelhead" (2007), the latter of which he also produced and directed. He is also the creator, writer and executive producer of the HBO drama series "Six Feet Under" and "True Blood". Ball was showrunner for "True Blood" for its first five seasons.  In 2010 Ball began work on a television adaptation of the crime noir novel "The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death" by Charlie Huston, to be titled "All Signs of Death". In December 2010, after several months of pre-production, HBO cancelled production on the project.  Ball was also one of the executive producers of the Cinemax series "Banshee".  In July 2016, it was announced that Ball's family drama "Here and Now" had been ordered to series by HBO. Starring Tim Robbins and Holly Hunter, the show was cancelled in April 2018 after one ten-episode season.

Personal life.

Ball has discussed his Buddhist faith in numerous interviews, noting how it has influenced his filmmaking. In an interview with Amazon.com, Ball commented on the plastic bag scene in "American Beauty", stating: "I had an encounter with a plastic bag! And I didn't have a video camera, like Ricky does... There's a Buddhist notion of the miraculous within the mundane, and I think we certainly live in a culture that encourages us not to look for that." Ball has also discussed how his Buddhism has shaped themes in "Six Feet Under" and "True Blood", both of which he has substantially contributed to.  Ball is gay and has been called "a strong voice for [the] LGBT community". In 2008 he made "Out" magazine's annual list of the 100 most impressive gay men and women.

Accolades.

For his work in television and film, Ball has received critical acclaim and numerous awards and nominations, including an Academy Award, an Emmy a Golden Globe, and awards from the Writers, Directors, and Producers Guilds.

Alan Erwin Ball (born May 13, 1957) is an American writer, director, and producer for television, film, and theater.

艾伦·鲍尔(英语:Alan Ball,1957年-5月13日)是一位美国编剧、演员、导演及监制。成名作为《美丽有罪》,而该电影亦为鲍尔赢得奥斯卡金像奖及金球奖。代表作为《身前身后》,而鲍尔亦凭该剧获艾美奖。近作则有《真爱如血》。