Portal is a single-player first-person action/puzzle video game
developed by Valve Corporation. The game was released in a bundle
package called The Orange Box for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on
October 9, 2007, and for the PlayStation 3 on December 11, 2007. The
Windows version of the game is also available for download separately
through Valve's content delivery system, Steam and was released as a
standalone retail product on April 9, 2008. The game consists primarily
of a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player's
character and other simple objects using the Portal Gun, a unit that
can create an inter-spatial portal between flat planes. The player
character is challenged by an AI named "GLaDOS" to complete each puzzle
using the Portal Gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the
puzzles are completed. The unusual physics allowed by the portal gun
are the emphasis of this game, and are an extension of a similar portal
concept in Narbacular Drop. Portal has been acclaimed as one of the
most original games in 2007 despite being comparatively short in
length. The game has received praise for its unique gameplay and darkly
humorous story, created with the assistance of Erik Wolpaw and Chet
Faliszek of "Old Man Murray" fame. It is also revered for the character
of GLaDOS, voiced by Ellen McLain in the English version, and the final
credits song "Still Alive" written by Jonathan Coulton for the game.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_%28video_game%29>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1687:
The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton was
first published, describing his laws of motion and his law of universal
gravitation.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica>
1946:
Named after Bikini Atoll, the site of the nuclear weapons test
Operation Crossroads in the Marshall Islands, the modern bikini was
introduced at a fashion show in Paris.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bikini>
1950:
The Israeli Knesset enacted the Law of Return, granting Jews around the
world the right to migrate to and settle in Israel and gain
citizenship.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return>
1996:
A cloned sheep named Dolly, the first mammal to have been successfully
cloned from an adult cell, was born at the Roslin Institute in
Midlothian, Scotland near Edinburgh.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_%28sheep%29>
2004:
Indonesia held its first direct presidential elections; Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono would later be elected president during the second round of
the elections on September 20.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_presidential_election%2C_2004>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
progenitor (n):
1. Any of a person's direct ancestors; an individual from whom one or
more people are descended.
2. A predecessor of something.
3. Someone who originates or founds
something
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/progenitor>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it
produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and
spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The
rest is literature.
--Jean Cocteau
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean_Cocteau>
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