November 24, 2011
Nineteen Eighty-Four (first published in 1949) by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party. Life in the Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control, accomplished with a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc), which is administrated by a privileged Inner Party elite. Yet they too are subordinated to the totalitarian cult of personality of Big Brother, the deified Party leader who rules with a philosophy that decries individuality and reason as thoughtcrimes; thus the people of Oceania are subordinated to a supposed collective greater good.
The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to re-write past newspaper articles so that the historical record is congruent with the current party ideology. Because of the childhood trauma of the destruction of his family — the disappearances of his parents and sister — Winston Smith secretly hates the Party, and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother.
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November 24, 2011
‘We‘ is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin completed in 1921. It was written in response to the author’s personal experiences during the Russian revolution of 1905, the Russian revolution of 1917, his life in the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond, and his work in the Tyne shipyards during the First World War. It was on Tyneside that he observed the rationalization of labor on a large scale. Zamyatin was a trained marine engineer, hence his dispatch to Newcastle to oversee ice-breaker construction for the Imperial Russian navy. The novel was first published in 1924 by E.P. Dutton in New York in an English translation.
‘We’ is set in the future. D-503 lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which allows the secret police/spies to inform on and supervise the public more easily. The structure of the state is analogous to the prison design concept developed by Jeremy Bentham commonly referred to as the Panopticon. Furthermore, life is organized to promote maximum productive efficiency along the lines of the system advocated by the hugely influential F.W. Taylor. People march in step with each other and wear identical clothing. There is no way of referring to people save by their given numbers. Males have odd numbers prefixed by consonants, females have even numbers prefixed by vowels.
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November 24, 2011
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley’s fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of CE 2540 (632 A.F. in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society.
The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of futurology (the study of postulating possible futures). Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, ‘Brave New World Revisited (1958),’ and with his final work, a novel titled ‘Island’ (1962), a utopian counterpart to ‘Brave New World’s dystopian setting.
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November 24, 2011
‘The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering’ is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks, whose central theme is that ‘adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.’ This idea is known as Brooks’ law, and is presented along with the second-system effect (the tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems to have elephantine, feature-laden monstrosities as their successors) and advocacy of prototyping.
Brooks’ observations are based on his experiences at IBM while managing the development of OS/360. He had mistakenly added more workers to a project falling behind schedule. He also made the mistake of asserting that one project — writing an Algol compiler — would require six months, regardless of the number of workers involved (it required longer). The tendency for managers to repeat such errors in project development led Brooks to quip that his book is called ‘The Bible of Software Engineering,’ because ‘everybody quotes it, some people read it, and a few people go by it.’ The book is widely regarded as a classic on the human elements of software engineering. The work was first published in 1975
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November 24, 2011
Overengineering is when a product is more robust or complicated than necessary for its application, either (charitably) to ensure sufficient factor of safety, sufficient functionality, or due to design errors.
Overengineering is desirable when safety or performance on a particular criterion is critical, or when extremely broad functionality is required, but it is generally criticized from the point of view of value engineering as wasteful. As a design philosophy, such overcomplexity is the opposite of the minimalist school of thought.
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November 24, 2011
Software bloat is a process whereby successive versions of a computer program include an increasing proportion of unnecessary features that are not used by end users, or generally use more system resources than necessary, while offering little or no benefit to its users.
Software developers in the 1970s had severe limitations on disk space and memory. Every byte and clock cycle counted, and much work went into fitting the programs into available resources. Achieving this efficiency was one of the highest values of computer programmers, and the best programs were often called ‘elegant’; —seen as a form of high art.
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November 24, 2011
Shovelware is a derogatory computer jargon term that refers to software noted more for the quantity of what is included than for the quality or usefulness. The term is also used to refer to software that is ported from one computer platform or storage medium to another with little thought given to adapting it for use on the destination platform or medium, resulting in poor quality. The metaphor implies that the creators showed little care for the original software, as if the new compilation or version had been indiscriminately created / ported with a shovel, without any care shown for the condition of the software on the newly created product. The term ‘shovelware’ is coined with semantic analogy to phrases like shareware and freeware, which describe methods of software distribution.
Shovelware was often used to refer to conversions in the manner floppy disc collections were aggregated onto CD-ROMs. Today there is potential for similar shovelware in converting PC websites into mobile websites with little thought to optimizing for the new platform or the conversion of console games to PC games. The practice of shovelware has largely decreased due to the wide availability of high speed networking and software downloading and the limited capacity of removable media in modern computers compared to the growing massive file sizes of newer software packages. It continues in some cases with bundled or pre-installed software, where many extra programs of dubious quality and usefulness are included with a piece of hardware, often called derisively ‘crapware.’
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November 21, 2011
Steve Haworth is a body modification artist based in Phoenix, Arizona. He is responsible for the invention and popularization of subdermal and transdermal implants, such as the ‘Metal Mohawk.’ He designed specialized medical instruments called dermal elevators for this process. He has also done pioneering work with surface bars, ear shaping, tongue splitting, magnetic implants, and artistic branding (using electrocautery units). He has worked on individuals noted for their extensive modifications such as The Enigma, Katzen, Stalking Cat and The Lizardman. Many other respected artists in the body modification community cite Haworth as an inspiration. Fellow body modification artist Samppa von Cyborg says that ‘He’s the most important, most respected body modder out there.’ Shawn Porter of body modification blog ‘Scar Wars’ explains, ‘I directly credit Steve’s branding as a main influence on the newer generation of scarification artists; his high detail branding (which caused a stir when it was featured in ‘In the Flesh,’ ‘Body Art,’ and ‘Bizarre’) showed people that you could do more than just dots, chevrons and geometric shapes.’
Haworth’s father was a manufacturer of surgical equipment, and he continued in the family business, eventually branching into piercing jewelry and body modification instruments. Currently he is retired from regular piercing, preferring to concentrate on 3D implants and other types of body modification. He continues to manufacture body jewelry and tools for body modification. He and his business partner Jesse Jarrell create unique silicone jewelry for large-gauge piercing with their company Kaos Softwear. Haworth travels around the country and the world frequently, and conducts seminars on his body modification techniques. He founded the body suspension group ‘Life Suspended’ and performs suspensions with them on regular basis. He is also the co-founder of the production company ‘Horns & Halos,’ which puts on several fetish-themed events every year.
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November 21, 2011
In body modification, an implant is a device placed under the human skin for decorative purposes. Such implants may be subdermal (beneath the skin) or transdermal (partially below and partially above the skin). In the context of body modification, some may consider injections of silicone and other substances a type of implant as well. Some types of implants may be performed by doctors or other medical professionals, while others are performed by body modification artists.
Examples include collarbone piercing, deep chest piercing, eyeball implants, flesh stapling, genital beading, magnetic implants, and scrotal implants. A clavicle or collarbone piercing is a very deep piercing that passes beneath the collarbone, and therefore enters the body cavity. These are highly prone to rejection as the collarbone placement is a high movement area.
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November 21, 2011
The Immortality Drive is a small memory device which was taken to the International Space Station in a Soyuz spacecraft in 2008. The Immortality Drive contains digitized DNA sequences of a select group of humans, such as physicist Stephen Hawking, comedian Stephen Colbert, Playboy model Jo Garcia, game designer Richard Garriot, Pro Wrestler Matt Morgan, and athlete Lance Armstrong.
The microchip also contains a copy of ‘George’s Secret Key to the Universe,’ a children’s book authored by Stephen Hawking and his daughter, Lucy. The intent of the Immortality Drive is to preserve human DNA in a time capsule, in case some global cataclysm should occur on Earth.
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November 20, 2011
Car Talk is a radio talk show broadcast weekly on National Public Radio stations throughout the United States and elsewhere. The hosts are brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi, also known as Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers. Car Talk is structured as a call-in radio show: listeners call with questions related to motor vehicle maintenance and repair. Most of the advice sought is diagnostic, with callers describing symptoms and demonstrating sounds of an ailing vehicle while the Magliozzis make an attempt at identifying the malfunction.
While the hosts pepper their call-in sessions with jokes directed at both the caller and at themselves, the depth and breadth of their knowledge of automobiles is extensive, and they are usually able to arrive at a diagnosis and give helpful advice. Also, if a caller has an unusual name, they will inquire about the spelling, pronunciation, and/or origin of their name. They may also comment about the caller’s hometown.
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November 19, 2011
A capsule hotel is a type of hotel with a large number of extremely small ‘rooms’ (capsules) intended to provide cheap and basic overnight accommodation for guests not requiring the services offered by more conventional hotels. The guest space is reduced in size to a modular plastic or fiberglass block roughly 2 m by 1 m by 1.25 m. Most include a television, an electronic console, and wireless internet connection. Capsules are stacked side by side and two units top to bottom, with steps providing access to the second level rooms. Luggage is stored in a locker. Privacy is ensured by a curtain or a fiberglass door at the open end of the capsule. Washrooms are communal and some hotels include restaurants (or at least vending machines), pools, and other entertainment facilities.
This style of hotel accommodation was developed in Japan and has not gained popularity outside of the country, although Western variants known as ‘Pod hotels’ with larger accommodations and often private baths are being developed. Guests are asked not to smoke or eat in the capsules. Capsule hotels vary widely in size, some having only fifty or so capsules and others over 700. Many are used primarily by men. There are also capsule hotels with separate male and female sleeping quarters. Clothes and shoes are sometimes exchanged for a yukata (a casual summer kimono) and slippers on entry. A towel may also be provided. The benefit of these hotels is convenience and price, usually around ¥2000-4000 (US$26–52) a night.
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