Archive

An archive is an accumulation of historical records or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of that person or organization. Professional archivists and historians generally understand archives to be records that have been naturally and necessarily generated as a product of regular legal, commercial, administrative or social activities. They have been metaphorically defined as "the secretions of an organism", and are distinguished from documents that have been consciously written or created to communicate a particular message to posterity.

In general, archives consist of records that have been selected for permanent or long-term preservation on grounds of their enduring cultural, historical, or evidentiary value. Archival records are normally unpublished and almost always unique, unlike books or magazines for which many identical copies exist. This means that archives are quite distinct from libraries with regard to their functions and organization, although archival collections can often be found within library buildings.

Archive file

An archive file is a file that is composed of one or more computer files along with metadata. Archive files are used to collect multiple data files together into a single file for easier portability and storage, or simply to compress files to use less storage space. Archive files often store directory structures, error detection and correction information, arbitrary comments, and sometimes use built-in encryption.

Applications

Archive files are particularly useful in that they store file system data and metadata within the contents of a particular file, and thus can be stored on systems or sent over channels that do not support the file system in question, only file contents – examples include sending a directory structure over email.

Beyond archival purposes, archive files are frequently used for packaging software for distribution, as software contents are often naturally spread across several files; the archive is then known as a package. While the archival file format is the same, there are additional conventions about contents, such as requiring a manifest file, and the resulting format is known as a package format. Examples include deb for Debian, JAR for Java, and APK for Android.

Archive (disambiguation)

Archive or The Archive or Archives may refer to:

Data storage

Publishing

Music

Creative

Creative may refer to:

Companies

Entertainment

Other uses

See also

Creative Technology Limited

Creative Technology Ltd. is a Singapore-based global company headquartered in Jurong East, Singapore. The principal activities of the company and its subsidiaries consist of the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, computers and related multimedia, and personal digital entertainment products.

It also partners with mainboard manufacturers and laptop brands to embed its Sound Blaster technology on their products.

History

The firm began as a computer repair shop, where Sim Wong Hoo developed an add-on memory board for the Apple II computer. Later, they started creating customized PCs adapted in Chinese. A part of this design included enhanced audio capabilities, so that the device could produce speech and melodies. The success of this audio interface led to the development of a standalone sound card.

In 1987, they released a 12-voice sound generator sound card for the IBM PC architecture, the Creative Music System (C/MS), featuring two Philips SAA1099 chips. Sim personally went from Singapore to Silicon Valley and managed to get RadioShack's Tandy division to market the product. The card was, however, unsuccessful and lost to AdLib. Learning from this, Creative produced the first Sound Blaster, which included the prior CM/S hardware but also incorporated the Yamaha YM3812 chip (also known as OPL2) that was found on the AdLib card, as well as adding a component for playing and recording digital samples. The firm used aggressive marketing strategies, from calling the card a "stereo" component (only the C/MS chips were capable of stereo, not the complete product) to calling the sound producing micro-controller a "DSP" (for "digital sound processor"), hoping to associate the product with a digital signal processor (the DSP could encode/decode ADPCM realtime, but otherwise had no other DSP-like qualities).

Creative (song)

"Creative" was released in November 2008 as the third single from Leon Jackson's debut album Right Now. To promote the track Jackson appeared on the official BBC Children in Need 2008 show performing the song as an "exclusive" as this was the first time Jackson had performed the track. The song went onto debut at number 94 on the UK Singles Charts.

Release and promotion

The song was released in November 2008 as a digital download only through Syco and Sony BMG. To promote the song, Jackson appeared on the 2008 series of Children in Need where he performed the song in London.

Music video

The music video for "Creative" shows Jackson performing the song in front of a big band. Also, in the video Jackson is trying to impress a female which features in the video. Throughout the video the female does not pay much attention to Jackson but however towards the end of the video the female seems to pay slight attention to Jackson.

Critical reception

The BBC said: