January 2, 2011
x86 refers to a family of instruction sets based on the 8086 CPU, which was launched by Intel in 1978. The architecture has been implemented in processors from Intel, Cyrix, AMD, VIA, and many others, and is still dominant in the microprocessor market. An instruction set is a list of all the instructions that a processor can execute (e.g. add, subtract, move, load, store, etc.). Many additions and extensions have been added to the x86 instruction set over the years, almost consistently with full backward compatibility.
There have been several attempts, also within Intel itself, to break the market dominance of the inelegant x86 architecture that descended directly from the first simple 8-bit microprocessors. But, continuous refinement of x86 microarchitectures, circuitry, and semiconductor manufacturing have made x86 hard to replace. The scalability of x86 chips such as the eight-core Intel Xeon and 12-core AMD Opteron is underlining x86 as an example of how continuous refinement of established industry standards can resist the competition from completely new architectures.
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January 1, 2011
The Magpul FMG-9 is a prototype for a folding machine gun, designed by Magpul Industries in 2008. It is made out of a light-weight polymer material rather than metal, making it easy to carry and conceal. It is also small enough even to fit in the back pocket of most pants.
It was developed for use by personal protection details such as the United States Secret Service. It is still a prototype and may or may not be made in large numbers for law enforcement agencies. The prototype uses Glock pistol firing mechanisms, specifically the 9mm Glock 17 pistol and the Glock 18 machine pistol.
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January 1, 2011
OpenCola is a brand of cola unique in that the instructions for making it are freely available and modifiable. Anybody can make the drink, and anyone can modify and improve on the recipe as long as they, too, license their recipe under the GNU General Public License. Since recipes are, by themselves, not copyrightable, the legal basis for this is untested.
The original version 1.0 was released on 27th January 2001. Current Version is 1.1.3. Although originally intended as a promotional tool to explain free and open source software, the drink took on a life of its own and 150,000 cans were sold. The Toronto-based company Opencola founded by Grad Conn, Cory Doctorow, and John Henson became better known for the drink than the software it was supposed to promote. Laird Brown, the company’s senior strategist, attributes its success to a widespread mistrust of big corporations and the ‘proprietary nature of almost everything.’
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December 23, 2010
FakeTV is a burglar deterrent that makes it look like someone is home watching television by recreating the sort of light produced by an HDTV. It comes with an internal light sensor which allows the device to activate when it becomes totally dark (0.5 lux or lower) and a built in timer with four modes of operation: Always On, Dusk +4 HRS, Dusk +7 HRS, and Off. It retails for $30.
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December 22, 2010
Freestyle is a touch screen soda fountain introduced by The Coca-Cola Company in 2009. The machine features over 100 different Coca-Cola drink products, and custom flavors. Microdosing blends one or more concentrated ingredients in 46-ounce packets with water and sweetener at the point where the beverage is dispensed, thus avoiding the use of traditional 5-gallon boxes of syrup (also known as a bag-in-a-box). Cartridges store concentrated ingredients in the dispenser cabinet and are RFID enabled. The machine uses RFID chips to detect its supplies and to radio resupplying needs to other units.
These machines include flavors not previously available to the American market including Orange Coke which was previously sold only in Russia and the Baltics, and flavored Dasani waters. The machines transmit supply and demand data to both Coca-Cola and the owner including brands sold, times of the day of sales, troubleshooting information, and service data. They also use Coca-Cola’s loyalty program to let people earn secret flavors.
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December 22, 2010
Joe Camel (officially Old Joe) was the advertising mascot for Camel cigarettes from 1987 – 1997, appearing in magazine advertisements, billboards, and other print media. The U.S. marketing team of R. J. Reynolds, looking for an idea to promote Camel’s 75th anniversary, re-discovered Joe in the company’s archives in the late 1980s. The caricatured camel was created in 1974 by a British artist, Billy Coulton, for a French advertising campaign that subsequently ran in other countries in the 1970s.
In 1991, the ‘Journal of the American Medical Association’ published a study showing that by age six nearly as many children could correctly respond that ‘Joe Camel’ was associated with cigarettes as could respond that the ‘Disney Channel’ logo was associated with Mickey Mouse, and alleged that the ‘Joe Camel’ campaign was targeting children, despite R. J. Reynolds’ contention that the campaign had been researched only among adults and was directed only at the smokers of other brands.
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December 22, 2010
The Shadow Dexterous Hand is a humaniform robot hand system developed by The Shadow Robot Company in London. The hand is comparable to a human hand in size and shape, and reproduces all of its degrees of freedom. The Hand is commercially available and currently used by NASA, Bielefeld University and Carnegie Mellon University. It reportedly costs more than $100,000. The Hand uses the sense of touch, pressure, and position to reproduce the human grip in all its strength, delicacy, and complexity.
The SDRH was first developed by Richard Greenhill and his team of engineers in Islington, London, as part of The Shadow Project, (now known as the Shadow Robot Company) an ongoing research and development program whose goal is to complete the first convincing humanoid. An early prototype can be seen in NASA’s collection of humanoid robots, or robonauts. The Hand has haptic sensors embedded in every joint and finger pad, which relay information to a central computer for processing and analysis.
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December 20, 2010
The hammer and sickle is a part of communist symbolism and its usage indicates an association with Communism, a Communist party, or a Communist state. It features a hammer and a sickle overlapping each other. The two tools are symbols of the industrial proletariat and the peasantry; placing them together symbolizes the unity between industrial and agricultural workers. This emblem was conceived during the Bolshevik Revolution. It is best known from having been incorporated into the red flag of the Soviet Union, along with the Red Star.
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December 20, 2010
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, ‘Metropolis’ is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The most expensive silent film ever made, it cost approximately 5 million Reichsmark. The film was written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou in 1924, and published a novelization in 1926. Lang was influenced by the Soviet science fiction film ‘Aelita’ by Yakov Protazanov (1924), which was an adaptation of a novel by Alexei Tolstoy. The plot of ‘Aelita’ included a revolution taking place on the planet Mars. However, Metropolis advocates non-violent cooperation rather than the Marxist ideal of ‘class struggle.’
‘Metropolis’ was cut substantially after its German premiere, and much footage was lost over the passage of successive decades. There have been several efforts to restore it, as well as discoveries of previously lost footage. In 2008, a copy of the film 30 minutes longer than any other known surviving was located in Argentina. After a long period of restoration in Germany, the film was shown publicly for the first time simultaneously at Berlin and Frankfurt on February 12, 2010.
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December 19, 2010
ALDI, short for ‘Albrecht Discount,’ is a discount supermarket chain based in Germany founded by brothers Karl Albrecht and Theo Albrecht in 1913. Karl has since retired and is Germany’s richest man. Theo was Germany’s second richest man until his death in July 2010. The Aldi group operates about 8,210 individual stores worldwide. A new store opens every week in Britain alone.
Originally Aldi stores were ridiculed as being cheap shops selling low-quality goods, and that Aldi’s customers were mostly people who could not afford to shop elsewhere. Gradually many German consumers discovered that the poor reputation of Aldi’s products was either undeserved or economically justifiable. This shift in public perception was boosted by actions like a series of cookbooks that only used Aldi ingredients, which led to the emergence of a kind of Aldi fandom into parts of the German mainstream.
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December 17, 2010
The hobo nickel is a sculptural art form involving the creative modification of small-denomination coins, essentially resulting in miniature bas reliefs. The nickel, because of its size, thickness, and relative softness, was a favored coin for this purpose. Due to its low cost and portability, this medium was particularly popular among hobos, hence the name. Common hobo nickels sell for $5 or $10, and rarer or more desirable coins sell for hundreds of dollars.
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December 17, 2010
Love Tokens are custom engraved coins given as a gift. They were especially popular in the 1750s in the United States. They are made by machine-smoothing a coin (usually silver) on one or both sides, then engraving it with initials, monograms, names, scenes, etc., often with an ornate border. They can be mounted on pins or incorporated into bracelets and necklaces. The love token fad faded out in the early 20th century; love tokens engraved on buffalo nickels are quite rare and prized by collectors of ‘hobo nickels’ (altered coins).
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