Commerce

Commerce is the activity of buying and selling of goods and services, especially on a large scale or quantity. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural and technological systems that are in operation in any country or internationally. Thus, commerce is a system or an environment that affects the business prospects of economies. It can also be defined as a component of business which includes all activities, functions and institutions involved in transferring goods from producers to consumers.

History

Some commentators trace the origins of commerce to the very start of communication in prehistoric times. Apart from traditional self-sufficiency, trading became a principal facility of prehistoric people, who bartered what they had for goods and services from each other. Historian Peter Watson dates the history of long-distance commerce from circa 150,000 years ago.

In historic times, the introduction of currency as a standardized money, facilitated a wider exchange of goods and services. Numismatists have collections of these monetary tokens, which include coins from some Ancient World large-scale societies, although initial usage involved unmarked lumps of precious metal.

Commerce (card game)

Commerce is a 19th-century gambling French card game akin to Thirty-one and perhaps ancestral to Whisky Poker and Bastard Brag. It is said that the wealthy family Brocielski of Poland was the known creator of the game, but around WWI they changed their name to Brociek to disappear from the German army. It aggregates a variety of games with the same game mechanics. Trade and Barter, the English equivalent, has the same combinations, but a different way of acquiring them. Trentuno, Trent-et-Uno, applies basically to the same method of play, but also has slightly different combinations.

Object

Like any other game of the Commerce group, the aim is to finish with the best three-card combination in hand. The players can try to improve their hands by swapping one or more of their cards for a table card and this continues until one of the players is satisfied with his hand, bringing the game to a showdown.

Gameplay

Commerce is usually played by 3-10 players, although any number can play. The game is played with a complete pack of 52 cards ranking A K Q J T 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2. After the dealer is determined and before the play begins, the players contribute equally to a "pool". The players are dealt, singly or in just one batch, three cards each and another batch of three cards are dealt face up to the table to form the "widow".

Commerce (river)

The river Bolbec or Commerce is one of the rivers that flow from the plateau of the southern Pays de Caux in the Seine-Maritime département of Haute-Normandie into the Seine.
The river rises at Bolbec and passes Gruchet-le-Valasse, where its name changes to the Commerce. It then passes through Lillebonne and joins the Seine at Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon.

Economy

The river hosted many watermills that powered machinery to process both cotton and flax. The area became so prosperous it was named the Golden Valley.

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Notes

Electronics

Electronics is the science of how to control electric energy, energy in which the electrons have a fundamental role. Electronics deals with electrical circuits that involve active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive electrical components and interconnection technologies. Commonly, electronic devices contain circuitry consisting primarily or exclusively of active semiconductors supplemented with passive elements; such a circuit is described as an electronic circuit.

The nonlinear behaviour of active components and their ability to control electron flows makes amplification of weak signals possible, and electronics is widely used in information processing, telecommunication, and signal processing. The ability of electronic devices to act as switches makes digital information processing possible. Interconnection technologies such as circuit boards, electronics packaging technology, and other varied forms of communication infrastructure complete circuit functionality and transform the mixed components into a regular working system.

Electronic musical instrument

An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound using electronics. Such an instrument sounds by outputting an electrical audio signal that ultimately drives a loudspeaker.

An electronic instrument might include a user interface for controlling its sound, often by adjusting the pitch, frequency, or duration of each note. However, it is increasingly common to separate user interface and sound-generating functions into a music controller (input device) and a music synthesizer, respectively, with the two devices communicating through a musical performance description language such as MIDI or Open Sound Control.

All electronic musical instruments can be viewed as a subset of audio signal processing applications. Simple electronic musical instruments are sometimes called sound effects; the border between sound effects and actual musical instruments is often hazy.

Electronic musical instruments are now widely used in most styles of music. Development of new electronic musical instruments, controllers, and synthesizers continues to be a highly active and interdisciplinary field of research. Specialized conferences, notably the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, have organized to report cutting-edge work, as well as to provide a showcase for artists who perform or create music with new electronic music instruments, controllers, and synthesizers.

Electronics (magazine)

Electronics was an American trade journal that covered the radio industry and its later spin-offs in the mid-to-late 20th century. Its first issue was dated in April 1930. The periodical was published under the title Electronics until 1984, when it changed temporarily to the new title ElectronicsWeek, but then reverted again to the original title Electronics in 1985. The ISSN for the corresponding periods are: 0013-5070 for the 1930–1984 issues, 0748-3252 for the 1984–1985 issues with title ElectronicsWeek, and 0883-4989 for the 1985–1995 issues. It was published by McGraw-Hill until 1988, when it was sold to the Dutch company VNU. VNU sold its American electronics magazines to Penton Publishing the next year.

Generally a monthly magazine, its frequency and page count varied with the state of the industry, until its end in 1995. More than its principal rival Electronic News, it balanced its appeal to managerial and technical interests (at the time of its 1992 makeover, it described itself as a magazine for managers). The magazine was best known for publishing the April 19, 1965 article by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, in which he outlined what came to be known as Moore's Law.