Tuesday 13 August 2013

Democracy

Democracy is a system of government by the whole population or all the suitable members of a state, normally through chosen representatives. It takes in social, economic and cultural circumstances that allow the free and equal practice of political self-determination. Democracy differs with forms of government where power is either held by one person, as in a monarchy, or where power is held by a small number of individuals, as in an oligarchy.

More than a few variants of democracy exist, but there are two basic forms, both of which concern how the whole body of all qualified citizens executes its will. One form is direct democracy in which all qualified citizens have active and direct participation in the decision making of the government. In nearly all modern democracies, the whole body of all entitled citizens remains the sovereign power but political power is exercised indirectly through elected representatives; this is called representative democracy. 

The concept of representative democracy came up mainly from ideas and institutions that developed during the European Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the American and French Revolutions.

Wednesday 6 March 2013

Demo

Within the computer subculture known as the demoscene, a non-interactive multimedia presentation is called a demo. Demogroups create demos to demonstrate their abilities in programming, music, drawing, and 3D modeling. The key difference between a classical animation and a demo is that the display of a demo is computed in real time, making computing power considerations the biggest challenge. Demos are mostly composed of 3D animations mixed with 2D effects and full screen effects.

The boot block demos of the 1980s, demos that were created to fit within the small first block of the floppy disk that was to be loaded into RAM, were typically created so that software crackers could boast of their accomplishment prior to the loading of the game. What began as a type of electronic graffiti on cracked software became an art form unto itself. The demoscene both produced and inspired many techniques used by video games and 3D rendering applications today - for instance, light bloom, among others.