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Armada (novel)
''Armada'' is a science fiction novel by Ernest Cline, published on July 14, 2015 by Crown Publishing Group (a division of Penguin Random House). The story follows a teenager who plays an online video game about defending against an alien invasion, only to find out that the game is a simulator to prepare him and people around the world for defending against an actual alien invasion. Wil Wheaton, who narrated the audiobook version of Cline's previous novel, ''Ready Player One'', performs the audiobook of ''Armada'' as well. Plans for a film adaptation are also in process. Summary Zack Lightman, a high school senior with a reputation for getting into trouble, is one of the world’s top players of the video game ''Armada'', an online combat flight simulation game in which the Earth Defense Alliance attempts to save the earth from extraterrestrial invasion. One day, Zack sees a ship outside his classroom window that resembles one of those from ''Armada'', and returns home to look ...
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Ernest Cline
Ernest Christy Cline (born March 29, 1972) is an American science fiction novelist, slam poet, and screenwriter. He wrote the novels ''Ready Player One'', '' Armada'', and ''Ready Player Two'' and co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of ''Ready Player One'', directed by Steven Spielberg. Life and career Cline was born and raised in Ashland, Ohio, the son of Ernest Christy Cline and Faye Imogene (''née'' Williams) Cline. As a youth in the 1970s and 1980s, Cline was "addicted to video games and movies," especially ''Star Wars'', the movies of John Hughes, and the tabletop roleplaying game ''Dungeons & Dragons''. He worked in information technology in his twenties and worked on screenwriting during his spare time. Fanboys Cline co-wrote the screenplay for '' Fanboys'', based on a storyline he had developed in the late 1990s while his mother was dying of cancer. Cline shot some low-budget scenes himself and shared his screenplay draft with Harry Knowles, whose connectio ...
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Mutually Assured Destruction
Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender. It is based on the theory of rational deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons. The strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which, once armed, neither side has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm. The term "mutual assured destruction", commonly abbreviated "MAD", was coined by Donald Brennan, a strategist working in Herman Kahn's Hudson Institute in 1962. However, Brennan came up with this acronym ironically, spelling out the English word " mad" to argue that holding weapons capable of destroying society was irrational. Theory Under MAD, each side has enough nuclear weaponr ...
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Activision
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016. The company was founded as Activision, Inc. on October 1, 1979 in Sunnyvale, California, by former Atari game developers upset at their treatment by Atari in order to develop their own games for the popular Atari 2600 home video game console. Activision was the first independent, third-party, console video game developer. The video game crash of 1983, in part created by too many new companies trying to follow in Activision's footsteps without the expertise of Activision's founders, hurt Activision's position in console games and forced the company to diversify into games for home computers, including the acquisition of Infocom. ...
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Oculus Rift
Oculus Rift is a discontinued line of virtual reality headsets developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a division of Meta Platforms, released on March 28, 2016. In 2012 Oculus initiated a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Rift's development, after being founded as an independent company two months prior. The project proved successful, raising almost from around 10,000 contributors. Then in March 2014, Oculus was purchased by Facebook for $2 billion.Gleasure, R., & Feller, J. (2016). A Rift in the Ground: Theorizing the Evolution of Anchor Values in Crowdfunding Communities through the Oculus Rift Case Study. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 17(10), 708-736. The Rift went through various pre-production models since the Kickstarter campaign, around five of which were demonstrated to the public before reaching its commercial release. Two of these models were shipped to backers, labelled as development kits; the DK1 in mid 2013 and DK2 in mid-2014, intended to p ...
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372 Pages We'll Never Get Back
''372 Pages We'll Never Get Back'' is a podcast series created by Michael J. Nelson (of '' Mystery Science Theater 3000'' and ''RiffTrax'' fame) and Conor Lastowka (author of ''The Pole Vault Champion of the Universe'' and writer for ''RiffTrax''). Beginning in 2017 with Ernest Cline's ''Ready Player One'' (the titular 372-page book), the podcast discusses literature that the two men "are probably going to hate," though they have stated they end up enjoying some books much more than others. Episodes Reception In 2017, Marc Hershon of Vulture.com wrote, "While I actually enjoyed breezing through Cline's tribute to pop culture of latter half of the 20th century, I can't deny a certain pleasure in reliving it through ''372 Pages'' comedically brutal thrashing." The A.V. Club's Mike Vanderbilt interviewed Nelson and Lastowka in 2018. In 2019, Alice Nuttall of Book Riot wrote, "Nelson and Lastowka spin bad books into gold. Listening to an episode is like sitting in on a reading gr ...
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Podcast
A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing. Streaming applications and podcasting services provide a convenient and integrated way to manage a personal consumption queue across many podcast sources and playback devices. There also exist podcast search engines, which help users find and share podcast episodes. A podcast series usually features one or more recurring hosts engaged in a discussion about a particular topic or current event. Discussion and content within a podcast can range from carefully scripted to completely improvised. Podcasts combine elaborate and artistic sound production with thematic concerns ranging from scientific research to slice-of-life journalism. Many podcast series provide an associated website with links and show notes, guest biographies, transcripts ...
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Conor Lastowka
Conor is a male given name of Irish origin. The meaning of the name is "Lover of Wolves" or "Lover of Hounds". '' Conchobhar/Conchubhar'' or from the name ''Conaire'', found in Irish legend as the name of the high king Conaire Mór and other heroes. It is popular in the English-speaking world. Conor has recently become a popular name in North America and in Great Britain. Some alternative spellings for the name are often spelled '' Connor'', '' Conner'' and sometimes ''Konnor''. The name is occasionally also used as a female given name. Notable people named Conor ;Men * Conor Brady, former editor of ''The Irish Times'' * Conor Burns, British politician * Conor Casey, American soccer player * Conor Coady, English footballer * Conor Cruise O'Brien, Irish politician and commentator * Conor Daly, American racecar driver * Conor Deasy, indie-pop singer * Conor P. Delaney, Irish-American surgeon * Conor Garvey ( 2010s), Irish Gaelic footballer * Conor Gibbons, Irish Gaelic footballe ...
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Michael J
Michael may refer to: People * Michael (given name), a given name * Michael (surname), including a list of people with the surname Michael Given name "Michael" * Michael (archangel), ''first'' of God's archangels in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions * Michael (bishop elect), English 13th-century Bishop of Hereford elect * Michael (Khoroshy) (1885–1977), cleric of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada * Michael Donnellan (1915–1985), Irish-born London fashion designer, often referred to simply as "Michael" * Michael (footballer, born 1982), Brazilian footballer * Michael (footballer, born 1983), Brazilian footballer * Michael (footballer, born 1993), Brazilian footballer * Michael (footballer, born February 1996), Brazilian footballer * Michael (footballer, born March 1996), Brazilian footballer * Michael (footballer, born 1999), Brazilian footballer Rulers =Byzantine emperors= *Michael I Rangabe (d. 844), married the daughter of Emperor Nikephoros I * M ...
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Slate (magazine)
''Slate'' is an online magazine that covers current affairs, politics, and culture in the United States. It was created in 1996 by former '' New Republic'' editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. In 2004, it was purchased by The Washington Post Company (later renamed the Graham Holdings Company), and since 2008 has been managed by The Slate Group, an online publishing entity created by Graham Holdings. ''Slate'' is based in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C. ''Slate'', which is updated throughout the day, covers politics, arts and culture, sports, and news. According to its former editor-in-chief Julia Turner, the magazine is "not fundamentally a breaking news source", but rather aimed at helping readers to "analyze and understand and interpret the world" with witty and entertaining writing. As of mid-2015, it publishes about 1,500 stories per month. A French version, ''slate.fr'', was launched in February 20 ...
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The Verge
''The Verge'' is an American technology news website operated by Vox Media, publishing news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, consumer electronics news, and podcasts. The website launched on November 1, 2011, and uses Vox Media's proprietary multimedia publishing platform Chorus. In 2014, Nilay Patel was named editor-in-chief and Dieter Bohn executive editor; Helen Havlak was named editorial director in 2017. ''The Verge'' won five Webby Awards for the year 2012 including awards for Best Writing (Editorial), Best Podcast for ''The Vergecast'', Best Visual Design, Best Consumer Electronics Site, and Best Mobile News App. History Origins Between March and April 2011, up to nine of ''Engadget''s writers, editors, and product developers, including editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky, left AOL, the company behind that website, to start a new gadget site. The other departing editors included managing editor Nilay Patel and staffers Paul Miller, Ross Miller, Joann ...
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The Globe And Mail
''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it falls slightly behind the ''Toronto Star'' in overall weekly circulation because the ''Star'' publishes a Sunday edition, whereas the ''Globe'' does not. ''The Globe and Mail'' is regarded by some as Canada's " newspaper of record". ''The Globe and Mail''s predecessors, '' The Globe'' and ''The Mail and Empire'' were both established in the 19th century. The former was established in 1844, while the latter was established in 1895 through a merger of ''The Toronto Mail'' and the ''Toronto Empire''. In 1936, ''The Globe'' and ''The Mail and Empire'' merged to form ''The Globe and Mail''. The newspaper was acquired by FP Publications in 1965, who later sold the paper to the Thomson Corporation in 1980. In 2001, the paper merged with broadcast ...
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The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Globe'' is the oldest and largest daily newspaper in Boston. Founded in 1872, the paper was mainly controlled by Irish Catholic interests before being sold to Charles H. Taylor and his family. After being privately held until 1973, it was sold to ''The New York Times'' in 1993 for $1.1billion, making it one of the most expensive print purchases in U.S. history. The newspaper was purchased in 2013 by Boston Red Sox and Liverpool owner John W. Henry for $70million from The New York Times Company, having lost over 90% of its value in 20 years. The newspaper has been noted as "one of the nation's most prestigious papers." In 1967, ''The Boston Globe'' became the first major paper in the U.S. to come out against the Vietnam War. The paper's 2002 c ...
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