Encyclopedia

Point Lookout, Queensland Point Lookout is a headland and small coastal village located on the eastern coast of North Stradbroke Island. To the north lies Cape Moreton and to the south the next major headland is Point Danger on the New South Wales/Queensland border.
Point man Point man is an American English term used to refer to a soldier who is assigned to a position some distance ahead of a patrol as a lookout, or to a man who leads or inspires others in a business or political role.
Point mass A point mass in physics is an idealization of a body whose dimensions are very small compared to the other distances which are relevant to the problem. In such cases, the internal structure of the body can be neglected, and the body can be treated as if its mass were concentrated at one point in space.
Point mutation A point mutation, or substitution, is a type of mutation that causes the replacement of a single base nucleotide with another nucleotide. Often the term point mutation also includes insertions or deletions of a single base pair (which have more of an adverse effect on the synthesized protein due to nucleotides still being read in triplets, but in different frames- a mutation called a frameshift mutation).
Point Mallard Aquatic Center [Mallard Park]'s J. Gilmer Blackburn Aquatic Center, in the city of Decatur, AL, was developed in the early 1970's after Mayor Gilmer Blackburn saw enclosed "wave-making" swimming pools in Germany and thought one could be a tourist attraction in the United States.
Point Mugu State Park Point Mugu State Park is a large park located in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in Southern California. It is in the Western Santa Monica Mountains and is about one mile wide at the most, and one and three fourths miles from top to bottom at the most.
Point Mugu, California Point Mugu (IPA: ), California is an unincorporated area and geographical promontory on the Pacific coast in Ventura County, near the cities of Port Hueneme and Oxnard. It is also a name applied to the nearby Naval Air Station - NAS Point Mugu, and a test range facility known by various names over the years, including Pacific Missile Test Center and Naval Air Missile Test Center.
Point No Point Treaty The Point No Point Treaty was signed on January 26, 1855 at Point No Point, on the northern tip of the Kitsap Peninsula. Governor of Washington Territory Isaac Stevens (1818-1862) convened the treaty council on January 25, with the S'Klallam, the Chimacum and the Skokomish tribes.
Point of appearance Point of appearance is a generic term for any point in a telephone/data circuit from which a technician can test or pull stats. Some appearances are virtual, such as a Digital Cross-Connect System (DCS) computer terminal.
Point of Access for Providers of Information PAPI (Point of Access for Providers of Information) is a system for providing access control to restricted information resources across the Internet. It intends to keep authentication as an issue local to the organization the user belongs to, while leaving the information providers full control over the resources they offer.
Point of Beginning The Point of Beginning is a surveyor's mark on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border, just east of East Liverpool, Ohio. It marks the beginning location for the surveying of public lands that led to the opening of the Northwest Territory, and is the starting point of the surveys of all other lands to the west, reaching all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
Point of divergence In discussion of counterfactual history, a point of divergence (POD) is a historical event, with two possible postulated outcomes. Typically these represent the actual course of historical events (Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo) and another, such as Napoleon won the Battle of Waterloo.
Point of Grace Point of Grace is a group of Christian pop music singers and authors. This all-ladies quartet consisted of Shelley Breen, Heather Payne, Denise Jones, and Terry Jones, and two permanent band members, Dana Cappillino on guitar and Tommy McGee on bass.
Point of information Points of Information (or POIs) are a feature of competitive debate, allowing an opposing team member to offer a brief point during the current speech. As in some debating styles, such as World Schools Style, they often may not be offered in the first or last minute of any speech (known as protected time), or during Reply Speeches.
Point of interest A Point of Interest, or POI, is a specific point location that someone may find useful or interesting. An example is a point on the Earth representing the location of the Space Needle, or a point on Mars representing the location of the mountain, Olympus Mons.
Point of interface In Telecommunications a Point of Interface (POI) is used to show the physical interface between two different carriers, such as a local exchange carrier (LEC) and a wireless carrier or a LEC and a IntereXchange Carrier (IXC). This demarcation point often defines responsibility as well serving as a point for testing.
Point of Inquiry Point of Inquiry is a podcast produced by the Center for Inquiry (CFI). Each episode features interviews and commentaries focused on CFI's mission of promoting science, reason, and freedom of inquiry in every field of human interest.
Point of no return The point of no return, or the Rubicon, is the point beyond which someone, or some group of people, must continue on their current course of action. Either they physically cannot turn back, or doing so would be prohibitively expensive or dangerous.
Point of no return (computer games) In computer games, there are two main forms of scripting events that bring the plot forward. In linear games, the player must perform one specific task after another, such as jumping a series of barrels floating in a pool, defeating the underling boss villain before the head villain, or opening a series of stairway doors, floor after floor, that have puzzle locks.
Point of no return (disambiguation) Point of no return originated as a technical term in aviation for the point on a flight at which a plane no longer has enough fuel to return to the airfield from which it departed; by extension, it is used metaphorically to refer to any irrevocable commitment. For the original use, see Air navigation.
Point of No Return (ballet) Point of No Return [5' 00"] is a "ballet for tape (stereo)" composed by Juan Maria Solare. It was designed in Worpswede from January 24, 2002 to January 28, 2002, with details released on March 14, 2002, and made in Cologne at the composer's studio from September 29 to October 5, 2005.
Point of Recognition Point Of Recognition was the fastest growing hardcore band from Southern California. With its brutal combination of good old tough hardcore and the newer school of metallic, the band brings a heavy-hitting sound that guarantees satisfaction for any fan of hardcore.
Point of Rocks, Maryland Point of Rocks is in Frederick County, Maryland. It is named for the striking rock formation it sits on top of, which is only visible from boats on the Potomac River, or from the southern bank of the river in Virginia.
Point of sale POS or PoS is an abbreviation for point of sale (or point-of-sale, or point of service). This can mean a retail shop, a checkout counter in a shop, or a variable location where a transaction occurs in this type of environment.
Point of sale display Marketers design special advertising vehicles, called point-of-sale displays, which are found near, on or next to a checkout counter. This is meant to entice the customer into buying more products, or products that are on a special offer.
Point of view (literature) In literature and storytelling, a point of view is the related experience of the narrator — not that of the author. Authors rarely, in fiction, insert or inject their own voice, as this challenges the suspension of disbelief.
Point of view pornography Point of view pornography (POV) is adult entertainment that is filmed as if the watcher had experienced and filmed the happenings. POV originally stood for Prostitutes on video where a male would film a girl performing oral sex upon him with a small modern video camera giving the effect that the viewer was in his position looking down upon the girls performance.
Point of view shot A point of view shot (also known as POV shot) is a short scene in a film that shows what a character is looking at. It is usually established by being positioned between a shot of a character looking at something, and a shot showing the character's reaction (see shot reverse shot).
Point of View (Asimov) "Point of View" is a short story by Isaac Asimov. The story first appeared in Boys' Life magazine in 1975, and, due to the poor reception it received, was only reprinted in the collection The Complete Robot in 1982.
Point pleasant beach fire department The Point Pleasant Beach Fire Department is a fully volunteer fire department protecting the residents and visitors of the Borough of Point Pleasant Beach, NJ. The fire department consists of two independently incorporated fire companies.
Point plotting Point plotting is an elementary mathematical skill required in analytic geometry. Invented by René Descartes and originally used to locate positions on military maps, this skill is now assumed of everyone who wants to locate grid 7A on any map.
Point Park Civic Center The Point Park Civic Center was a proposed civic center for downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States, where the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers forms the Ohio River. The structure was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright on commission from Edgar J.
Point Pedro Point Pedro (In Tamil: பருத்தித்துறை (Parutthi Thurai) = Cotton Port, And in Sinhala: පේදුරුතුඩුව (Peduru Thuduwa) = Pedro's Point) is the northernmost town of the island of Sri Lanka. as the name suggest that this agriculturally active area with fertile calcic red latosols were exporting cotton to other countries.
Point Pelee National Park Point Pelee National Park is a park in Essex County in southwestern Ontario. It consists of a peninsula of land, mainly of marsh and woodland habitats, that tapers to a sharp point as it extends into Lake Erie.
Point Pinole Regional Shoreline The Point Pinole Regional Shoreline is a regional park on the shores of the San Pablo Bay, California (the northern arm of the San Francisco Bay). It is approximately 9 km² (2320 acres) in area, and is operated by the East Bay Regional Park District.
Point Piper, New South Wales Point Piper is a small harbourside, eastern suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Point Piper is 6km east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Municipality of Woollahra.
Point Place (That '70s Show) Point Place is a fictional small suburban town in Wisconsin in which the television sitcom That '70s Show takes place. The characters speak with a midwestern accent, consistent with the inhabitants of central Wisconsin.
Point Pleasant Beach (NJT station) The Point Pleasant Beach Train Station is a station stop located in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, on the New Jersey Transit North Jersey Coast Line, and is one of the most significant stops on the NJCL portion between Long Branch and Bay Head. This modern station is located on one of the borough's major arteries -- Arnold Avenue, Route 35 -- just blocks to the Atlantic Ocean, boardwalk, Manasquan Inlet marina and only steps to the community's downtown business, shopping, dining and entertainment nexus.
Point Pleasant Beach High School Point Pleasant Beach High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school that serves students in ninth through twelfth grades from Point Pleasant Beach in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States, as part of the Point Pleasant Beach School District.
Point Pleasant Beach School District The Point Pleasant Beach School District is a comprehensive community public school district that serves students in kindergarten through twelfth grade from Point Pleasant Beach, in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States.
Point Pleasant Boro High School Point Pleasant Borough High School is a four-year comprehensive public high school located on Laura Herbert Drive in Point Pleasant, New Jersey that serves students in grades nine through twelve. It is a part of the Point Pleasant School District.
Point Pleasant Canal The Point Pleasant Canal is a manmade canal in Ocean County, New Jersey. It was completed in late 1925 to connect the Manasquan Inlet and Manasquan River with Bay Head Harbor on the northern end of the Barnegat Bay.
Point Pleasant Rail Bridge The Point Pleasant Rail Bridge is a cantilever bridge that crosses the Ohio River between Gallipolis, Ohio and Point Pleasant, West Virginia. At the present time, the bridge is being used by Norfolk Southern for transporting goods from point to point via rail, but it was once used by Conrail, Penn Central, and the New York Central Railroad.
Point Pleasant School District The Point Pleasant School District is a comprehensive community public school district that serves students in kindergarten through twelfth grade from Point Pleasant, in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States.
Point Pleasant, Indiana Point Pleasant was a small village (now extinct) in Pine Township, Warren County, Indiana, located about a mile and a half southwest of Rainsville near the confluence of Big Pine Creek and Mud Pine Creek, a site currently known as Rocky Ford. It was laid out by one John H.
Point release A point release is a minor release of a software project, especially one intended to fix bugs or do minor cleanups rather than add features. The term implies that such releases are relatively frequent, and is generally used with respect to open source projects being developed in bazaar mode.
Point Reyes National Seashore Point Reyes National Seashore is 70,000 acre (283 km²) park preserve located on the Point Reyes Peninsula in Marin County, California, USA. As a national seashore, it is maintained by the US National Park Service as a nationally important nature preserve.
Point Reyes Station, California Point Reyes Station is a census-designated place in northern California, in western Marin County, California, with a population of 818. The CDP covers both the unincorporated town (population 350) and the surrounding countryside.
Point Richmond, Richmond, California Point Richmond or simply The Point is a neighborhood in southwestern Richmond, California at the base of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. The neighborhood is situated in the Southwestern corner of the city between Interstate 580 and the San Francisco bay at the foot of the Richmond-San Rafael bridge.
Point Roberts, Washington Point Roberts is an unincorporated community in Whatcom County, Washington, United States, on the southernmost tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula just south of the community of Tsawwassen in the Delta District Municipality of British Columbia, Canada. The population is 1,308 (US 2000 census).
Point shaving Point shaving, in organized sports, is a type of match fixing where the perpetrators try to prevent a team from covering a published point spread. Unlike other forms of match fixing, sports betting invariably motivates point shaving.
Point shooting Point Shooting is a method of shooting a firearm that relies on a shooter's instinctive reactions and kinematics to quickly engage close targets. Point Shooting does not rely on sights, but instead places the gun below the line of sight, but in many cases still in the field of vision.
Point source (pollution) A point source of pollution is a single identifiable localized source of air, water, thermal, noise or light pollution. A point source has negligible extent, distinguishing it from other pollution source geometries.
Point system A point system is one in which a driver's licensing authority issues demerits, or points to drivers on conviction for road traffic offenses. A major offense may lead to more than the maximum allowed points being issued, but more typically, the accumulation of too many points over a given period or time can lead to additional penalties, including fines and suspension or revocation of the driver's license.
Point Samson, Western Australia Point Samson () is a small town 1579 km north of Perth and 18 km north of Roebourne in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The town is a popular holiday location for the nearby mining towns, including Karratha and Dampier.
Point San Luis Light The Point San Luis Lighthouse is the only surviving Prairie Victorian model lighthouse that remains in existence on the West Coast of the United States. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and is presently being refurbished by the Point San Luis Lighthouse Keepers, a volunteer group.
Point Source (company) Point Source is a company situated in Hamble-le-Rice, United Kingdom. It was founded in 1991 and since has built up a reputation as a key developer of laser and fiber optic systems, specifically singlemode fiber delivery systems.
Point targets Point Targets are military targets which are concentrated in what can be considered a mathematical point, an infinitely small area which should be hit with munitions with extreme precision. Targets such as city buildings, and targets in the midst of many non-targets are considered to be point targets.
Point to point racing Point to Point racing is a form of amateur horseracing over fences for hunting horses. In Ireland many of the horses will appear in these races before they compete in National Hunt races either in Ireland or in the UK.
Point to Point Lee Model Lee Model for Point-to-Point Mode is a radio propagation model that operates around 900 MHz. Built as two different modes, this model includes an adjustment factor that can be adjusted to make the model more flexible to different regions of propagation.
Point Theatre The Point Theatre (originally dubbed The Point Depot, and often referred to simply as The Point) is a concert and events venue in Dublin, Ireland. It is located on the North Wall Quay of the River Liffey, amongst the Dublin Docklands.
Point-blank range In external ballistics, point-blank range is the distance between a firearm and a target of a given size such that the bullet in flight is expected to strike the target without adjusting the elevation of the firearm (see also gun). The point-blank range will vary with the firearm and its particular ballistic characteristics, as well as the target chosen.
Point-contact transistor A point-contact transistor was the first type of solid-state electronic transistor ever constructed. It was made by researchers John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain at Bell Laboratories in December of 1947.
Point-in-time recovery Point-in-time recovery in the context of computers is a system whereby a set of data or a particular setting can be restored or recovered from a time in the past. An example of this is Windows XP's feature of being able to restore operating system settings from a past date (before data corruption occurred, for example), or PostgreSQL's feature of being able to view a database table and its data as it was at a particular date in the past.
Point-of-view gun The Point-of-view gun is a fictional device created by Douglas Adams for the movie versionAccording to Robbie Stamp, executive producer of the movie and longtime friend and colleague of Douglas Adams, the device is unique to the film: "Humma, the Point of View Gun and the "paddle slapping sequence" on Vogsphere are brand new Douglas ideas written especially for the movie by him." (Ask Slashdot, 26th April 2005).
Point-to-multipoint communication (telecommunications) Point-to-multipoint communication is a term that is used in the telecommunications field which refers to communication which is accomplished via a specific and distinct type of multipoint connection. (See point-to-multipoint link).
Point-to-point construction Point-to-point construction is the way most electronics circuits were constructed before the 1950s. Point-to-point construction is still used to construct prototype equipment with few or heavy electronic components.
Point-to-point transit Point-to-point transit refers to a transportation system where a plane, bus or train travels directly to a destination rather than going through a central hub as opposed to the spoke-hub distribution paradigm where the transportation goes to a central location where the passenger changes to another train, bus or plane to reach their destination.
Point-to-Point Protocol In computing, the Point-to-Point Protocol, or PPP, is commonly used to establish a direct connection between two nodes. It can connect computers using serial cable, phone line, trunk line, cellular telephone, specialized radio links, or fiber optic links.
Point, Outer Hebrides Point (Scottish Gaelic: An Rubha), also known as the Eye Peninsula, is a peninsula in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, connected to the rest of the Isle of Lewis by a narrow isthmus, one mile in length and barely 100 metres wide. Point, situated very close to regional capital Stornoway, is home to around 2,600 people and is one of the few districts of the Western Isles or Outer Hebrides of Scotland where the population is actually increasing, although this is largely due to an influx of wealthy property developers and holiday home owners, The school population of Point is decreasing as much as the rest of scotland, indeed 2 of the 3 schools are due to close in the next decade.
Pointcut In aspect-oriented computer programming, a pointcut is a set of join points. Whenever the program execution reaches one of the join points described in the pointcut, a piece of code associated with the pointcut (called advice) is executed.
PointCast Media PointCast Media is a leading pay per click search feed and keyword advertising company founded in 1996. The privately held firm developed the PointCast Ad Keyword Network, as an industry pioneer PointCast Media was one of the first organizations to aggregate paid search listing from the leading pay for search firms.
Pointe a la Hache, Louisiana Point a la Hache is an unincorporated village or place in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. Located on the east bank of the Mississippi River, the village has been the seat for Plaquemines Parish since the formation of the parish.
Pointe shoes Pointe shoes, also referred to as toe shoes, are a special type of shoe used by ballet dancers for pointework. They developed from the desire to appear weightless onstage and have evolved to allow extended periods of movement on the tips of the toes (en pointe).
Pointe Walker Pointe Walker (4208 m), is a peak of Les Grandes Jorasses, is named after Horace Walker, president of the British Alpine Club, who made the first ascent of this summit. Les Grandes Jorasses are a collection of peaks joined by a long ridge and part of the Mont Blanc Massif in the Franco-Italian Alps.
Pointe-au-Père lighthouse The Pointe-Au-Père lighthouse was built in 1908 in the city of Pointe-au-Père, near Rimouski, Quebec, Canada. This city was well known in naval circles as the location of the pilot station for the Bas-Saint-Laurent (lower St.
Pointe-aux-Trembles (electoral district) Pointe-aux-Trembles is a provincial electoral district in Quebec, Canada that elects members to the National Assembly of Quebec. The district is located inat the north point of the Island of Montreal and includes the communities of Pointe-aux-Trembles and Montreal East.
Pointe-à-la-Croix, Quebec Pointe-à-la-Croix (Cross Point in English) is a town located on the Restigouche River in the Gaspésie region of eastern Quebec, Canada. The town is situated across from the city of Campbellton, New Brunswick.
Pointe-Ă -Pierre Wild Fowl Trust The Pointe-Ă -Pierre Wild Fowl Trust is a not for profit environmental non-government organisation located in Pointe-Ă -Pierre, Trinidad and Tobago. The Trust, which occupies 25 ha within the Petrotrin oil refinery, is dedicated to the conservation of wetlands and waterfowl, especially native whistling ducks and to environmental education.
Pointe-Claire, Quebec Pointe-Claire is a municipality in southwestern Quebec, Canada; population 29,286 (Statistics Canada, 2001). Along with the other municipalities on the island of Montreal, it was merged with the city of Montreal on January 1, 2002 by the provincial government.
Pointee Pointee is a term coined in Kenya for people of mixed African and other ethnic origins, usually African/Caucasian ancestry. It is somewhat humoristic as it is a pun on the racial percentage given in decimals: point 5 (0.
Pointer (computing) In computer science, a pointer is a programming language datatype whose value refers directly to (“points to”) another value stored elsewhere in the computer memory using its address. Obtaining the value to which a pointer refers is called dereferencing the pointer.
Pointer analysis Pointer analysis, or points-to analysis, is a static code analysis technique that establishes which pointers, or heap references, can point to which locations. It is often a component of more complex analyses such as escape analysis.
Pointer error A pointer error in a computer program is any mistake involving pointer variables. Common errors include confusing the value of the pointer forgetting whether a varable contains the desired value, or a memory reference to the desired value.
Pointer machine In theoretical computer science a pointer machine is an "atomistic" abstract computational machine model akin to the Random access machine. This article will not discuss pointer algorithms -- computer programs that deal with data structure problems (e.
Pointer swizzling In computer science, pointer swizzling is the conversion of references based on name or position to direct pointer references. It is typically performed during the deserialization (loading) of a relocatable object from disk, such as an executable file or pointer-based data structure.
Pointer Sisters Pointer Sisters are an American R&B group and recording act from Oakland, California that achieved great success during the 1970s and 1980s. Spanning four decades together between 1969 and the recent date, their repertoire has included diverse genres as R&B, jazz, bebop, country, soul, funk, disco/dance and rock.
Pointcheval-Stern signature algorithm In cryptography, the Pointcheval-Stern signature algortihm is a digital signature scheme based on the closely related ElGamal signature scheme. It changes the ElGamal scheme slightly to produce an algorithm which has been proven secure in a strong sense against adaptive chosen-plaintext attacks.
Pointillé Pointillé is a decorative technique in which patterns are formed on a surface by a means of punched dots. The technique is similar to embossing or engraving but is done manually and does not cut into the surface being decorated.
Pointillism Pointillism is a style of painting in which small distinct points of primary colors create the impression of a wide selection of secondary colors. The technique relies on the perceptive ability of the eye and mind of the viewer to mix the color spots into a fuller range of tones, and is related closely to Divisionism, a more technical variant of the method.
Pointing device A pointing device is any computer hardware component (specifically human interface device) that allows a user to input spatial (ie, continuous and multi-dimensional) data to a computer. CAD systems and graphical user interfaces (GUI) allow the user to control and provide data to the computer using physical gestures - point, click, and drag - typically by moving a hand-held mouse across the surface of the physical desktop and activating switches on the mouse.
Pointing stick The pointing stick (trademarked by IBM as the TrackPoint) is a pointing device (compare especially Touchpad) for laptops invented by research scientist Ted Selker and is present on many brands of laptop, including IBM's line of ThinkPad laptops (now made by Lenovo) and on Dell Latitudes under the name of Track Stick. It has also been observed on computer mice and on some desktop keyboards.
Pointless Fest Pointless Fest is an annual four-day hardcore punk festival situated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the month of August. Although not recognized in mainstream society it is one of the "best-kept secrets" of the Philadelphia punk scene.
Pointless Violence Pointless Violence or Zinloos Geweld (Dutch) is a term frequently used by among others the media, politicians and NGO's to define the nature of several shocking events in Belgium and the Netherlands in recent years. The term expresses the perceived pointlessness of the occurred acts of violence.
Points in Case Points in Case, often referred to as PIC, is a college humor website founded in 2000 by Court Sullivan. Points in Case began as an ezine distributed to an electronic mailing list by Sullivan at Emory University in 1999, but expanded online to include user submissions and eventually, other writers.
Points of Light Foundation & Volunteer Center National Network The Points of Light Foundation & Volunteer Center National Network is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to engaging more people and resources in solving serious social problems. The organization, founded in 1990, offers a variety of programs, products, and services to help support volunteer-based organizations and connect volunteers to volunteer opportunities.
Points of View Points of View is a long-running television show shown in the United Kingdom on BBC One, featuring the letters of viewers offering praise, criticism and purportedly witty observations on the television of recent weeks.
Points per game Points per game, often abbreviated PPG, is the average number of points scored by a player per game played in a sport, over the course of a whole season or career. It is calculated by dividing the total number of points by number of games.
Pointstream Software Pointstream Software is a software application used to capture, edit, and visualize densely sampled cloud point datasets derived from 3D scanners. Developed by Arius3D, located in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, the software uses a pixel as it's basic primitive form.
Pointwise In mathematics, the qualifier pointwise is used to indicate that a certain property is defined by considering each value f(x) of some function f. An example is pointwise convergence of functions — a sequence of functions

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