What is "oracle"

Oracle \Or"a*cle\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Oracled; p. pr. & vb. n. Oracling.] To utter oracles. [Obs.]

Oracle \Or"a*cle\, n. [F., fr. L. oraculum, fr. orare to speak, utter, pray, fr. os, oris, mouth. See Oral.]

1. The answer of a god, or some person reputed to be a god, to an inquiry respecting some affair or future event, as the success of an enterprise or battle.

   Whatso'er she saith, for oracles must stand.
   --Drayton.

2. Hence: The deity who was supposed to give the answer; also, the place where it was given.

   The oracles are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
   --Milton.

3. The communications, revelations, or messages delivered by God to the prophets; also, the entire sacred Scriptures -- usually in the plural.

   The first principles of the oracles of God.
   --Heb. v. 12.

4. (Jewish Antiq.) The sanctuary, or Most Holy place in the temple; also, the temple itself.
   --1 Kings vi. 19.

   Siloa's brook, that flow'd Fast by the oracle of God.
   --Milton.

5. One who communicates an oracle[1] or divine command; an angel; a prophet.

   God hath now sent his living oracle Into the world to teach his final will.
   --Milton.

6. Any person reputed uncommonly wise; one whose decisions are regarded as of great authority; as, a literary oracle. ``Oracles of mode.''
   --Tennyson.

   The country rectors . . . thought him an oracle on points of learning.
   --Macaulay.

7. A wise pronouncement or decision considered as of great authority.

late 14c., "a message from a god, expressed by divine inspiration," from Old French oracle "temple, house of prayer; oracle" (12c.) and directly from Latin oraculum "divine announcement, oracle; place where oracles are given," from orare "pray, plead" (see orator), with material instrumental suffix -culo-. In antiquity, "the agency or medium of a god," also "the place where such divine utterances were given." This sense is attested in English from c.1400.

n. 1 A shrine dedicated to some prophetic deity. 2 A person such as a priest through whom the deity is supposed to respond with prophecy or advice. 3 A prophetic response, often enigmatic or allegorical, so given. 4 A person considered to be a source of wisdom. 5 A wise sentence or decision of great authority. 6 One who communicates a divine command; an angel; a prophet. 7 (context computing theory English) A theoretical entity capable of answering some collection of questions. 8 (context Jewish antiquity English) The sanctuary, or most holy place in the temple; also, the temple itself. vb. (context obsolete English) To utter oracles or prophecies.

1. n. an authoritative person who divines the future [syn: prophet, seer, vaticinator]

2. a prophecy (usually obscure or allegorical) revealed by a priest or priestess; believed to be infallible

3. a shrine where an oracular god is consulted

In classical antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination.

An oracle in Greek and Roman polytheism was an agency or medium, usually a priest or a priestess, through which the gods were supposed to speak or prophesize.

Oracle may also refer to:

Oracle, in comics, may refer to:

• Oracle, an alias used by DC Comics character Barbara Gordon
• Oracle, the original alias of the DC Comics character who would be reimagined as Aurakles
• Oracle (Marvel Comics), a Marvel character and member of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard
• Oracle Inc., a company established by the Marvel character Namor
• The Oracle, a W.I.T.C.H. character

ORACLE (from "Optional Reception of Announcements by Coded Line Electronics") was a commercial teletext service first broadcast on the ITV network in the mid-late 1970s and later on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, finally ending on both channels at 23:59 GMT on 31 December 1992.

The ORACLE or Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine, an early computer built by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was based on the IAS architecture developed by John von Neumann. As with all computers of its era, it was a one of a kind machine that could not exchange programs with other computers (even other IAS machines). It used vacuum tubes, transistors, and diodes. It used a Williams tube for 2048 words of memory. Its addition time was 70 microseconds, the multiplication time was 370-590 microseconds, and the division time was 590 microseconds. These times include the storage access time, which was about 62 microseconds.

The ORACLE pre-dated input from disks and the use of punch cards with computers; it used paper tape for input and breakage of the tape was a frequent problem.

These are not facts for which I can provide citations, just reminiscences from a visit I made when I was a child. Maybe something in this can inspire someone else with more "real" information! In 1953, or maybe 1952, there was a math meeting (a sectional meeting of the AMS or MAA national mathematics societies, but at this remove I don't remember which and I have been unable to find any relevant listings at the websites of those two societies)at Oak Ridge: My father was a math prof at U-Tennessee Knoxville. The meeting arranged a tour of the Oracle lab, and my father was able to smuggle me in. (That was still not totally trivial, Oak Ridge as a city was still closed, not just the labs.) So I got to see the machine, it was demonstrated to us, and these are some of its characteristics that I remember. (I was 10 or 11, but they did do a good job of explaining things and for that matter almost all of the older mathematicians were as new to computers as I was.)

The system as we saw it had a desk-like user station across one end of a room that must have been about 35 feet square. Going back perpendicular to that end were three rows of cabinetry. On the right side (looking at the desk) were the tape drives. On the left and going down the middle of the room were rows of cabinets containing the electronic chassis and cooling blowers (about which more below).

There were several, I am remembering about 6, tape drives. But the tapes were not on reels. The tape itself was two inches wide and a drive (by engaging/disengaging two different pressure rollers on capstans) could fairly quickly start the tape moving in either direction. I think there were 12 tracks on the tape, and something like 50 feet of tape on each drive. The tape was pulled from a glass-walled vacuum column on one side to a similar column on the other, and just piled up in the column: Thus there was very little mass to accelerate or decelerate, mostly the tape itself at the head and for a few feet on either side. As I understood it then the tapes were backup storage to the Williams tubes: One did not dismount a tape and mount another in its place, the way tape was used in later decades. The "fast" Williams tube memory was very limited: I think there were 2K words of high speed storage, each 40 bits. So data and code were shuffled back and forth to tape to make space available.

There was a console typewriter for simple I/O. I am pretty sure there were a paper tape reader and punch, but I don't know width or format: Maybe someone else can supply that, it would be interesting as a sidelight on how character sets developed. There was also a graphics display. I remember that it was an intensive user of computing resources, and I think the main arithmetic units had to calculate X/Y coordinates at which to position a beam and light up a dot. (We certainly did not say "pixel".) There was some provision for audio output, perhaps like the CDC 1604, I know because as a demonstration they played Christmas music and displayed a Christmas tree.

As an interesting fact about hardware failures: A few years later I know the ORACLE developed some intermittent errors that were very hard to track down. As part of its cooling the machine had large "squirrel cage" blowers, like in a home furnace, inside the electronics cabinets. The blowers were spun by electric motors through V belts. The motors, and probably the blower housings, were mounted on rubber vibration-isolation mounts. After a lot of searching it was found that the belts were operating as van de Graaf generators, building high static charges until a small "lightning bolt" would let it discharge. That of course would cause havoc with the nearby, high impedance, computing circuitry.

I am sorry this is fragmented and imprecise, but maybe others can build on it! This machine was a significant step in the development of computing and deserves better documentation.

Oracle is a fictional character in the Marvel Universe.

Oracle is the second album by the heavy metal band Kittie. It was released in 2001. The album shows a change in Kittie's sound and features elements of thrash metal and death metal.

Oracle is a recording by guitarist Michael Hedges released on the Windham Hill label. It won the 1998 Grammy Award for Best New Age Album. Oracle peaked at #7 on the Billboard New Age Album charts.

The album was reissued in 2009 by Valley Entertainment.

The Oracle was a workhouse that produced cloth in the English town of Reading, Berkshire. The Oracle shopping mall, which occupies a small part of the site, takes its name from the Oracle workhouse.

Oracle is an album by American jazz bassist Gary Peacock and guitarist Ralph Towner recorded in 1993 and released on the ECM label.

Oracle is the name of a model rocket with built-in digital camera, manufactured by Estes Industries, for aerial photography. In contrast to the camera rocket Astrocam, the Oracle allows the making of a complete film of a rocket flight. The Oracle is best flown with a D12 engine (see Estes number coding), but can be flown with C11 engines.

During launch, the camera films downward; showing the launch pad and engine exhaust during ascent. The rocket's nose cone may be attached to the parachute in two ways; there are attachments on both ends of the nose cone. Attaching the parachute to the bottom films the parachute during descent. Attaching the parachute to the top films the approach of the ground during descent.

The nose-cone attaches to a PC via USB. The resulting AVI file contains approximately 30 (between 30 and 35) seconds of uncompressed video at 9 frame/s at a resolution of 320 pixels wide by 240 pixels high (320x240). The data rate is 2047 kbit/s. The camera holds only one video at a time.

In computing, software testers and software engineers can use an oracle as a mechanism for determining whether a test has passed or failed. The use of oracles involves comparing the output(s) of the system under test, for a given test-case input, to the output(s) that the oracle determines that product should have. William E. Howden first defined and used the term in this sense in his article "Introduction to the Theory of Testing". Additional work on different kinds of oracles was explored by Elaine Weyuker.

Oracles often operate separately from the system under test. Method postconditions are commonly used as automated oracles in automated class testing. The oracle problem is often much harder than it seems, and involves solving problems related to controllability and observability.

Common oracles include:

• specifications and documentation
• other products (for instance, an oracle for a software program might be a second program that uses a different algorithm to evaluate the same mathematical expression as the product under test)
• a heuristic oracle that provides approximate results or exact results for a set of a few test inputs

Hoffman, Douglas; Heuristic Test Oracles, Software Testing & Quality Engineering Magazine, 1999

• a statistical oracle that uses statistical characteristicsMayer, Johannes; and Guderlei, Ralph; Test Oracles Using Statistical Methods

• a consistency oracle that compares the results of one test execution to another for similarity

Hoffman, Douglas; Analysis of a Taxonomy for Test Oracles, Quality Week, 1998

• a model-based oracle that uses the same model to generate and verify system behavior
• a human oracle (i.e. the correctness of the system under test is determined by manual analysis)