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thevividgreenmoss · 6 years

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The right has been trying to sell Americans on consumption-based standards of freedom for years. Indeed, the CEA’s report on the baleful impact of socialism makes much more sense when one remembers that the current head of the agency is Kevin Hassett, a longtime fixture at the American Enterprise Institute, one of the foremost think tanks of the American conservative movement. (Hassett’s also the coauthor, with rabid supply-sider James Glassman, of one of the most ridiculous books of all time, 1999’s Dow 36,000.) This is the level of persuasion one expects from a person whose career has largely been devoted to persuading rich people to subsidize the production of dubious research praising the system that allowed them to get rich.

These think tanks specialize in that sort of “me or your lying eyes” approach to selling Americans on American-style capitalism (which you’d think, if it were working correctly, wouldn’t need so much marketing help). That’s why the Heritage Foundation, perhaps the most influential conservative think tank, periodically tells us that there’s no real poverty in America—or at least that while there might be some, it is, all in all, pretty pleasant poverty—in reports with titles like 2011’s “Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?”

…All of these reports—and scores more pieces of commentary making the exact same arguments and citing the exact same figures—were authored or co-authored by Robert Rector, who has been shaping conservative arguments on poverty since joining the Heritage Foundation in 1984. He’s been called the “intellectual god-father” of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, also known as welfare reform. Considering his part in that triumph of bipartisanship, which really did, as Bill Clinton promised, “end welfare as we know it,” it’s clear why Rector is so invested in the argument that to be poor in twenty-first century America is a cakewalk—he’s responsible for creating a whole new population of poor people.

…The tendency for American capitalism to justify itself by the gadgets it is capable of making affordable is an old one. It was the basis of the notorious 1959 “kitchen debate” between Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, which took place at an exhibition of American technological wizardry set up in the heart of Moscow. The American pavilion featured the latest in American time-saving household appliances, and the debate almost immediately took on a legendary character in the United States, where we told ourselves that Soviet citizens were entranced by our washing machines and Polaroid cameras. The Americans faked the automated kitchen, of course—there was a guy behind a two-way mirror making the proto-Roomba move and turning on the “automated” dishwasher, Joe Maxwell, one of the industrial designers responsible for the kitchen, told Gizmodo decades later—as part of the mission was to convince the Russians that things being marketed to middle-class Americans, including things that were years away from any sort of commercial viability, were commonplace in homes across the country. (The Soviet exhibition in the United States, meanwhile, featured a modest three-room apartment. And Sputnik.) While the Soviets were suitably impressed with the quality of our kitchen appliances, this message left in the exhibition’s visitors’ book seems pertinent: “A shortcoming: you show what you produce, but you do not show what you produce it with.”

At the time, the (real, non-automated) dishwashers would have been manufactured in the United States, to be sold to middle-class families to help wives more efficiently carry out their unpaid domestic labor while their husbands were at work manufacturing dishwashers. The government subsidized the construction and (for white families) debt-financed purchasing of large suburban homes so that there would be somewhere to put all the dishwashers—and so that the people who built homes would have enough homes to build to afford their own dishwashers and large suburban homes. This was called “capitalism.” (The Council of Economic Advisers report on socialism quotes the late economist Sherwin Rosen’s dismissive description of Sweden as a place where “a large fraction of women work in the public sector to take care of the children of other women who work in the public sector to care for the parents of the women who are looking after their children.” Just think of all the surplus labor going to waste caring for people instead of being expropriated by the owners of capital!)

Eventually, the sort of people who own household appliance companies saw the return on their investments begin to stall out, due to inflation and labor power, so that system was phased out in favor of one in which many people still got large, debt-financed homes, but there were fewer dishwasher manufacturing jobs. The dishwashers got a lot cheaper, though, to help the new arrangements seem more palatable.

Yet still, despite the dirt cheap vacuums and flat-screen TVs, something seems wrong. People keep complaining about “income inequality” and writing books about how grindingly difficult it is for an alarmingly large number of Americans to get by.

Conservatives seem to have noticed that their primary argument—why do you feel so poor when you have such a large TV?—has had trouble making inroads among people who actually experience life in the United States and who don’t work within the think tank–lobbying firm–Council of Economic Advisers circuit. They’ve noticed, too, that while TVs, for example, are quite cheap, things essential to live—and things essential to “get ahead” in the United States—are only becoming more expensive.

The American Enterprise Institute even produced a chart illustrating the problem. It shows the prices of things like new cars, clothing, toys, and TVs staying steady or dramatically falling relative to the inflation rate, while food, housing, child care, and—especially—medical care skyrocket in price. If you want an explanation of why non-wealthy Americans feel so stretched thin even in a time of supposed abundance, there it is. They can afford to get their kids toys but not bachelor’s degrees.

…Ex–Cold Warriors still fondly recall the kitchen debate. They still chuckle at the crummy cars and televisions the Soviet citizenry had to endure as Americans innovated cruise control and Betamax tapes. But during the periods when life was stable in the Soviet Union, its people were reasonably satisfied. The years since the end of Communism, on the other hand, have been devastating to a generation of Russians. As Masha Gessen wrote for The New York Review of Books in 2014:

In the seventeen years between 1992 and 2009, the Russian population declined by almost seven million people, or nearly 5 percent—a rate of loss unheard of in Europe since World War II. Moreover, much of this appears to be caused by rising mortality. By the mid-1990s, the average St. Petersburg man lived for seven fewer years than he did at the end of the Communist period; in Moscow, the dip was even greater, with death coming nearly eight years sooner.

Many of those deaths were violent or self-imposed. Deaths from injuries and poisoning are five times higher in Russia than in Western Europe. “We would never expect to find premature mortality on the Russian scale in a society with Russia’s present income and educational profiles and typically Western readings on trust, happiness, radius of voluntary association, and other factors adduced to represent social capital,” the economist Nicholas Eberstadt writes. In her review of scholars’ attempts to explain the story of the Russian death rate, Gessen wonders if the problem might be a sort of inherited cultural despair—whether “Russians are dying for lack of hope.”

Millions of former Soviet citizens now have access to the consumer bounty Americans lorded over them during the Cold War. It has not helped them adapt to life without a safety net. However often those notoriously unreliable Lada cars might have broken down, an inferior product line drove many fewer Russians to drink themselves to death than economic shock therapy did.

The year after Gessen wrote that piece, Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton published their paper showing that, after declining for decades, the mortality rate for middle-aged white Americans had been steadily climbing between 1999 and 2013. They updated their report in 2017, with data showing that non-college-educated white American men were increasingly dying of “diseases of despair,” meaning mainly drug and alcohol abuse and suicide.

The connecting thread in both the Russian and American cases seems to be decline in living standards—not absolute deprivation. By historical and international standards, there are much worse things to be than a member of the stagnant or declining middle class in America, or even post-Soviet Russia—nearly everyone we’re talking about probably has televisions and refrigerators among other cheaply produced pieces of gadgetry. But people seem to choose to obliterate themselves not when their current situation is dire, but when there is no apparent path to a better one.

Non-college-educated white American men are also, we’re told, President Trump’s base. His Council of Economic Advisers would like them to be grateful for all the room our large country has provided for them to park their trucks.

#*#essays #the worst is when regular people who aren't on the payroll or heritage or cap or w/e echo these same arguments bc they've remained part of #the dwindling population of socioeconomically secure individuals #like my cousin deadass talks about how the fact that people have smartphones and shit is somehow a tradeoff for increasing inability to #afford any actual essentials like housing or healthcare or w/e classic joe rogan fan #he also thinks most people in the US lived in farms until the 60s so idk

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disneyloading498 · 3 years

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Harem Atari 2600

Atari 2600 Complete Game List

Harem Atari 2600 Play

Atari 2600 Complete Game List

In short: if you're looking for an ordinary Atari 2600 ROM set, look elsewhere. It can be found almost everywhere on the Internet without too many problems. If you're looking for the most genuine and best documented Atari 2600 ROM collection in the world, then look. Welcome to the all new 'The What Are We Fighting Four'. One part Let's Play, one part podcast. The What Are We Fighting Four is Travis, Joan, Josh, and TV Di.

- A -

Adventures of Max

Little is known about this title other than it was part of the game development deal Atari made with Axlon during the late 80's. According the former Atari programmer Steve DeFrisco

'This was one of the “Designed by Nolan” games, which was never finished. It was to be set in Medieval times, the player is a knight with a sword. That’s pretty much all we had. John moved on to another company and the game was never finished. The opening sequence of the character running and jumping into the hole, and falling to the bottom worked, but that’s it.'

Bagman

This port of the 1982 Stern coin-op was programmed by Steve Hostetler for Atari. According to Steve he was almost finished with the game when they laid him off. Steve sent all his materials back to Atari after he was laid off, and it is unknown what happened to them.

Ballblazer

Previously thought to be only a rumor, programmer Tod Frye recently confirmed that this game was indeed once in development. Although the technically challenged 2600 was woefully underpowered to produce the split screen scrolling required by Ballblazer, Tod apparently had a demo up and running (various reports put it somewhere between 30% and 60% complete). The whereabouts of this demo are currently unknown.

Battle of the Sexes

Developed by Michael Case for Multivision. Multivision president Eugene Finkei talked about this game in the October 1983 issue of Videogaming and Computergaming Illustrated: 'Battle of the Sexes is played simultaneously by 2 players. It's very innocent. Each player has surrogate partners scrolling across the screen. Each player must score with as many surrogates as possible while trying to knock out the surrogates of the other partner. There are different skill levels & variations: it can be played by 2 guys with girls scrolling across the screen or by women with men scrolling across the screen. To score, the player directs the figure to bounce together with the surrogate for a fraction of a second. No genitalia. And you don't shoot the other's surrogates, you merely get them out of the way.' This title was long thought not to have even been started, but the programmer recently confirmed in a 2007 interview with Digital Press that the game was actually completely finished: 'Battle of the Sexes involved male and female figures coming together from the top and bottom of the screen, to either shoot each other or screw each other. The owners kept the only copy. It wasn't as good (as Harem). It was basically like Pong. I knocked it out in a few weeks so we could say we had two games when we approached distributors.' The whereabouts of the one and only prototype are currently unknown.

Bird Programmed by David Lamkins, after he departed Parker Brothers for Activision. David worked in Activision's short-lived Boston office. During that time, he worked on a 'bird game' which was never published. He discussed the game in a 2002 article that appeared in issue #74 of the Atari 2600 Connection: 'I spent my time at Activision working on a 2600 game I called Bird. I’ve heard that Rex (Bradford) later described it as “a pterodactyl on a bombing run”, which is pretty good as a brief description. My inspiration for Bird came party from the Heavy Metal movie (the scenes with the girl riding the bird into battle), and partly from Activision’s Battlezone clone, Robot Tank (the point-of-view perspective of the playing field). The player piloted a bird which had a limited endurance that was affected partly by the intensity of the player’s maneuvers and partly by damage incurred from missiles fired by ground-based hostiles somewhat reminiscent of Dr. Who’s Daleks. The Bird game was really based around subtlety and survival. The player had to be sparing in his moves in order to make it to the next round. It was a shooter game, but not so much an aggressive game. It had kind of a Zen quality to it – probably way too cerebral for the market. I was recently contacted by Activision’s Ken Love, who is in the process of putting together a definitive collection of Activision games, including all the unreleased and prototype games. Ken wanted to acquire a copy of Bird. If any such copies exist, it’s either on a 20-year-old hard drive in some Activision storage locker, or in a dusty prototype cartridge in someone’s closet. That’s kind of a shame. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing it one more time…'

Blow Out

Developed by Mattel, Blow Out was a party game that had 'Two roller-skating dancers drop darts from a scaffold onto rising balloons. An easy enough task, except these rude guys keep bumping into each other and knocking each other off the scaffold. When the music stops, that's the signal for the next players to take the controllers.'

According to the Blue Sky Rangers website 'David Akers only worked on the game briefly in June 1983 before being pulled off to work on higher priority projects.' It is unknown how far along this game got before being cancelled.

Candyland Surfing

According to former 20th Century Fox programmer John Marvin 'There was a surfing game where you surfed a rainbow. That was taking advantages of something you could do cheaply with the VCS, each scan line you could change the color and you got this great rolling rainbow on the screen. It was more a screensaver than a game, the problem was there wasn't a lot of gameplay in it.'

Circus Charlie A port of the 1983 Konami/Centuri coin-op. Parker Brothers announced Atari 2600 VCS, ColecoVision, and Commodore 64 versions of this title, and prototype boxes were shown in a CES press kit. According to a Parker Brothers internal marketing release schedule, this game was scheduled for a September 1984 release. The C64 version was actually completed but never released by Parker Brothers (it was eventually released by Konami in 1987). According to Phil Orbanes, former Senior VP of Research & Development at Parker Brothers, the VCS version received 'some coding' at the very least, and may have been completely finished. The programmer is unfortunately unknown, and as yet no prototypes of this game have surfaced.

Computer Corridor

Developed by Mattel. According to the Blue Sky Rangers website 'This game started out as an original concept by Ron Surratt and Jane Terjung called Computer Revenge. At the same time, Spring 1983, Russ Ludwick was working on an Intellivision game called Moon Corridors, inspired by the arcade game Battlezone. In mid-1983, Marketing began an agressive campaign to release titles on as many different game platforms as possible. Noting similarities between Computer Revenge and Moon Corridors (mainly a 3-D grid effect), they decreed that the two games should be mooshed into one - Computer Corridor - and released on both Intellivision and Atari. By the time they tested and approved the idea, though, Russ was no longer working at Mattel Electronics and no one else was available to pick up the Intellivision version. A couple of months later Jane also left Mattel, killing the project altogether.'

It is not known how far along this title got before being cancelled.

Count's Castle

Also known as the missing CCW title, this would have a been a math title based on the Sesame Street Count character. An internal Atari memo puts the game at 80% complete, but the game was never finished. Apparently the original programmer left and there was no one available to finish the game.

Cryptogram

According to David Crane he developed this word game after moving to Activision from Atari. The game would display a scrambled phrase that the player would then have to unscramble in the quickest time possible. Players could also enter their own phrases if they didn't want to use one of the built in phrases. This game used a programming technique called 'Filled Venetian Blinds' which alternated the scanlines used by the regular Venetian Blinds technique every frame, making the image look more solid (no more lines) but also slightly transparent due to only half the image appearing on each frame. Unfortunately the game was deemed to be of 'limited interest' and Activision feared it wouldn't sell well enough to consider releasing so the project was abandoned.

Cumulus

According to the Blue Sky Rangers Website 'Cumulus was an original Atari 2600 idea by Jeff Ratcliff. His idea was to take a relatively simple game but use the extra memory available on a Super Cartridge to create spectacular visual effects not seen before on Atari - mainly really cool explosions. He worked on the game briefly in August 1983, programming a demonstration screen showing a high-resolution cloud with an enemy ship above it. While the game was listed on the weekly in-house status reports, it never received the four-digit product number that made a project official.' Sims 4 buying groceries.

A screenshot exists.

David and Goliath

Programmed by Rick Harris for Enter-Tech Ltd. Enter-Tech Ltd. did some Christian themed games for Sparrow who released Music Machine for the 2600. David and Goliath consisted of two stages: On the first David had to herd sheep and on the second David had to fight Goliath. Unfortunately the contracting company ran out of money and the game was never finished.

Dazzler

Port of the 1982 Century Electronics coin-op. Developed by Enter-Tech Ltd. for the Unitronics Expander system (which also went unreleased). The game was on a cassette and not a cartridge.

Dual Scrolling

Based on a programming effect developed by David Akers in which the screen was split in two with each half scrolling a background independently of the other. Although there was no game designed to use this technique marketing apparently loved it and decided that a game could be designed around it.

According to the Blue Sky Rangers website 'After determining the same effect could be created on Intellivision, Marketing put the still-to-be-determined game - temporarily called Dual Scrolling - onto the official release schedule. That was December 19, 1983. Exactly one month later, Mattel Electronics closed. Although no game concept had yet been thought of, Dual Scrolling was one of the few games officially still in development for the Atari 2600 when the doors were shut.'

Flapper

Developed by Mattel. Flapper was to be a unique game where 'You control the Flapper to rescue baby Flappers from an underground maze. The maze is filled with snakes, bats and ghosts. Cave-ins and landslides keep opening and closing the tunnels. Luckily, the Flapper is a unique fellow: he has three types of beanies - chopper for flying, gun for shooting, umbrella for protection - and four interchangeable types of legs: flying, jumping, running and walking. You have to find and change the appropriate beanie and legs for him to overcome the obstacles and rescue the babies!'

According to the Blue Sky Rangers website Flapper was never finished, although some coding did take place. 'While the game was listed on the weekly in-house status reports, it never received the four-digit product number that made a project 'official.' Steve worked on Flapper briefly in August 1983 before being pulled off to work on higher priority projects.'

Flashlight

Not really a game, but another 'cool programming technique' for the 2600 that Mattel thought they could design a game around. Programmer Stephen Roney had developed an interesting programming effect on the Intellivision where a moving circle of light could illuminate the background and any objects within the circle. Another Mattel programmer, Ron Surratt, was asked to duplicate this effect on the 2600. Once it was shown that it was indeed possible Mattel tried to come up with a game to fit the effect, but closed their doors two months later.

Flesh Gordon

This was to be Wizards final game entry, but was never released. Based on the 1974 soft-porn movie of the same name, Flesh Gordon was long thought to have never been even started until the programmer of the game kindly set the record straight.

'Flesh gordon was finished. It sucked, sometimes literally if you know what I mean. It was a horrible game with a lot of sex and the payoff was the ability to hump using the joystick. There was nothing cool or interesting but then wizard video wanted what they wanted. There came a time when they stole a copy of the final or near final version which was sent for their approval. They refused to pay and they went to publish the game using the rom we sent them to approve. It was just about finished but it needed some finishing touches. We never did them. They never officially released it as I understand and that was no loss.'

What happened to the prototype that was sent to Wizard is unknown. Rumors over the years have surfaced that some collectors have access to the rom, but this has never been verified and is highly suspect.

A picture of the box exists.

The Impossible Game

Developed by Telesys, but never released. The Impossible Game was shown at the January 1983 CES show, and mentioned in an interview with Alex Leavens in the Aug/Sept. '83 issue of Video Games Player magazine. According to Alex 'It's a puzzle game, sort of like Rubik's Cube. You don't blow anything up and nobody gets hurt--it's strictly a mental challenge.'

Other than this short interview, the only other information we have on this game comes from Leonard Herman, who actually played the game. According to Leonard, the object of the game was to 'successfully navigate through six levels of 36 squares that are randomly chosen by the computer.' On the first level the player only had to pick one square at a time, but on each new level the amount of squares the player ahd to pick increased (2 on the second level, 3 on the third, etc.).

For more information on The Impossible Game, check out to Leonard's personal write up of the game.

Qixiang Electron Science Technology Co.，Ltd. Is a high-tech company with more than 20 years built-up experience of research, production and sales in the wireless communication equipment industry. The microphone is the Anytone type that has the A/B selection in the mic. There are 2 A/B indicators. The one near the A/B button tells you which VFO you are on. And the A/B at the top of the microphone indicates which VFO your receiving a signal on which is handy. Audio is loud and transmission is clear. Plug and Play Package: AnyTone AT-D878UV PLUS w/ SkyBridge Plus Dual Band Digital Hotspot “The SkyBridge Hotspot really opened up DMR for me. I enjoy being able to connect with talk groups from across the country and around the world. Anytone at 7777.

James Bond: As Seen in Octopussy

Before Parker Brothers decided to turn it into a crappy version of Moon Patrol, the James Bond game went through two different iterations. Originally starting out as James Bond in Octopussy, this version would have taken place on a train and be based on only one movie (rather than a series of movies like the final game). In this game James would have to shoot at and dodge bullets from two armed men as they ran around on a train cart. This version of the game was seen by more than one person at various game shows and was advertised in at least one PB catalog. It is highly likely that this game was completed, but dropped in favor of the 'Moon Patrol' version.

A screenshot the actual prototype running exists.

James Bond: Moonraker Demo

According to programmer Charlie Heath, he did a one screen demo of a James Bond game based on the movie Moonraker. Sadly it appears that the demo has probably been lost forever.

'I'd prototyped a 'James Bond' scene during my first first few weeks, to see what I could do with a VCS: you're in space orbiting earth in the space shuttle, chasing bio-terrorist pods to shoot them down before they break up in the atmosphere, while your shuttle and the pod are being buffeted about by reentry. You see something that looks a bit like a spinning earth bobbing about at the bottom of the screen. If you watch the movie Moonraker, it's one of the climactic scenes, but Parker wasn't interested in it for the Bond license because they wanted to do something that was more along the lines of Pitfall - little guy running around with various spy gadgets.'

'It wasn't much beyond a concept, but it was a pretty functional single screen 1st person perspective shooter. Not up to the level of Star Raiders gameplay, but I thought the pseudo-orbiting-world view was pretty cool and unique at that time. I didn't keep a copy of the code when I left Parker Brothers. It might be buried on a backup tape somewhere at Parker Brothers, but more likely the tape was reused for cereal inventory or something like that.'

Keystone Cannonball (Keystone Kapers II ver #1) Dan Kitchen worked on two unreleased sequels to Keystone Kapers. This first version involved Officer Kelly chasing the crook across the rooftops of a train. 'I had also done a sequel to Keystone Kapers, which was the Keystone cop on a train. And that was actually a neat thing because I was able to pull off some interesting software kernels where I had eight rotating wheels on the bottom of a train where you could normally only have 2 or 6 It was a very cute game. From screen to screen, from boxcar to boxcar fighting and trying to defeat the character from Keystone Kapers, who was the runaway criminal. That was a very huge game as it had non-symmetrical play and had a really nice, large engine at the front of the game and a very large caboose at the bottom of the game.' According to Dan the game never got to a playable state and was only around 20% done before being scrapped for unknown reasons. Recently Dan found his prototype which featured the train and officer Kelly running on top of the cars. You can see a video of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u60o2nYEXM Keystone Kapers II ver #2 Dan Kitchen worked on two unreleased sequels to Keystone Kapers. This second version was a vertically scrolling game similar to Crazy Climber and involved Officer Kelly climbing a building while Harry Hooligan threw objects at him. According to Dan this version got to a playable state, but was cancelled for unknown reasons. - L - The Levee Game Programmed by Dan Kitchen for Activision. According to Dan: 'Keystone Kelly appeared in a yellow rain slicker running around ladders and platforms repairing cracks that would appear in a background Hoover Dam-style image complete with warning lights and a beautiful sun setting on the distant reservoir . The screen kernels were written such that I could change the background color on every scan line so the entire screen would slowly fill up with water if the player couldn't cement the cracks in time. There was also a mechanic to 'empty' the water on the player's side of the dam to keep the game going.'

- M -

M*A*S*H II Programmed by David Lubar for Sirius Software. This alternate version of M*A*S*H developed at Sirius was ultimately scrapped in favor of another version developed internally at Fox by Doug Neubauer. Programmer David Lubar describes what he remembers of the game: 'I know I had Klinger at the top of the screen, on guard duty. Once in a while, he'd try to run off, and the player had to stop him. Beyond that, I think the game involved taking supplies to different surgery tents.' 20th Century Fox had announced a M*A*S*H II game and it is believed that this version may have been planned for release as a sequel. A prototype of this game is rumored to exist in the hands of a private collector, but nothing has been released to the public as yet.

Mission Omega

Mission Omega was a space shooter developed by Commavid. According to an interview with some ex-Commavid employees, this game was finished but sent back to the programmer for some 'fine tuning'. The game was never re-finished in time to be released.

Mission X

Port of the 1982 Data East Coin-Op of the same name. Although released for the Intellivision, the 2600 version was never finished before being cancelled for 'unknown reasons'. It is not known how far along the game was before being cancelled.

Monkey Business

Designed by Mattel, Monkey Business was to be one of the few unique 2600 games designed by Mattel (all others were ports of existing Intellivision games). Although not completed, Monkey Business was fairly far along before being cancelled.

A description of the game found on the Blue Sky Rangers website reads as follows 'In the zoo, things have gone awry. Billy the Chimp has escaped and is up to no good. As any curious monkey would, he has managed to free the elephants! It's up to you, as Mike the Zookeeper, to return the elephants to their cages.

Once you have restored order in the elephant section, you must quickly run to the next section of cages. Perhaps you'll have to capture the loose Koalas. Maybe you'll have to avoid soaring hawks, battle fierce tigers or try to grab the slippery penguins. Along the way, you'll find items which will be of help to you, such as a bag of peanuts or a net. So grab your hat and stop this monkey business!'

- P -

Penetrator

Programmed by Bill Heineman for Avalon Hill. This game is not believed to have been advertised or even announced. According to the programmer: 'The game itself was a lot like Activision's Megamania. It was a simple drop from the sky shooter. It was unfinished because I left Avalon Hill to work for Time/HBO on a playcable system for the 2600. The game was probably 50% complete. My source to Penetrator was lost many years ago when the 5 1/4 floppy it was stored on simply went bad. The only EPROMS made were almost certainly erased to make way for Death Trap, etc, because we only had a few dozen and they kept dying on us because we burned EPROMS so many times. Only three dev cards were made, so all the other programmers had to write code, and test on an EPROM.' Avalon Hill's stay in the market was short-lived and it's unknown if any further work was done on this title, or if it was simply erased.

Pepper II

Port of the 1982 Exidy arcade game that was released on the Colecovison. It has recently been confirmed that the same programming team that was responsible for the Atari 2600 version of Turbo was indeed working on this game, but it was never completed (or even reached a playable state) due to the collapsing game market. A prototype case was found for this game, but it was empty as it was just a mock-up used for advertisements. Artwork sheets for the game graphics also exist.

Incidentally, there is no Pepper I. The II in the title referred to the fact that the character had two personalities (angel and devil) and not that it was a sequel.

Porkys

Not the same game that was released by 20th Century Fox, but rather a game based on the cartoon pigs that were seen on the electric sign in the movie. Former TCF programmer John Marvin remembers seeing this game while he worked at the company. According to John 'The game made no sense at all.' It is unknown what happened to this prototype after it was rejected.

- R -

Real Time Chess Real Time Chess (working name) was a strategy game developed by Greg Easter while at Atari. According to Greg: “You commanded one piece and tried to capture other pieces one at a time without stepping on any of the squares they could land on. In simple mode, all of the squares the other piece could move to were lit up. In expert mode, you had to keep that in mind yourself. So it was also a training aid for playing chess, sharpening your mind to keep track of different pieces. That game was about 90% done when I was told Atari would not be releasing any more games no matter what, so there was no point in my finishing it.” Greg said that that several test carts were made, but it is unknown where they currently are.

The Rescue of Emmanuelle Alan Roberts (designer of X-Man) talked about this game in the October 1983 issue of Videogaming and Computergaming Illustrated: 'We are currently working on The Rescue of Emmanuelle, based on the famous Emmanuelle character. It is a male-oriented action game where one has to rescue Emmanuelle, the rewards being that, if you are skillful enough to save her, she is going to thank you, bestow her kindness on you. It's a climbing game. It takes place on the Eiffel Tower. The hardest part in designing the game is that the tower doesn't fit well on the TV screen. We're working on a scrolling system.' It is not known how far this game made it into development before being cancelled.

Robotron: 2084

A Proposed title for the ill-fated Atari Graduate add-on computer. A WIP version of this game was shown at at least one show before being cancelled (along with the Graduate). According to one eye witness, it was 'The most flickery thing I'd ever seen'. This isn't surprising considering the amount of objects that would be needed to be shown on the screen at one time was well beyond the poor 2600's capabilities. A picture of the title screen exists showing some pretty nice graphics for the 2600.

Sharp Shot

Port of the Intellivision game developed by APh Technologies. Mattel decided not to release the 2600 version of this game after it was widely criticized on the Intellvision as being 'too easy'.

Shove It! was a two player game being developed at CBS which would have used a special cable to communicate between two 2600s. According to programmer Bob Curtiss: 'Shove It! was my original concept for a two-player 2600 game that used two 2600 systems, each with their own TV of course. The idea was that someone would take their 2600 over to a friend’s house to play this game with them. A bit far-fetched at the time, but to CBS’ credit they were open to these kinds of ideas. The game was simple – there were 9 rectangular objects, sort of like long pieces of wood or metal, displayed in a 3D view, that you could ‘push’ or ‘shove’ away from you, and they would move toward the other player on their screen. They in turn could shove them back toward you. The two 2600’s communicated via serial data transfer with a serial cable connected to one joystick port on each machine. Did you ever imagine that you could send data from one 2600 to another via the joystick ports? You’d use the joystick plugged in to the 2nd joystick port to select which object you wanted to shove toward the other player, and the push the button to shove it. I had a functioning prototype working within 3 months.' Shove It! was cancelled after CBS decided to get out of the video game business and closed down their Atari 2600 development unit. Stomp it This port of the Bally Midway coin-op (which was also unreleased) was done by Alex Nevelson at Bally Midway but went unreleased. There is no information on how either the arcade game or home version would have played.

Sky Blazer

Sky Blazer was a multi-level air combat simulation game by Broderbund, similar to CBS's Wings. Although shown at the 1983 Summer CES show, the game was never released.

Blackberry reload software, free download - Reload, BlackBerry Desktop Software, BlackBerry Desktop Manager, and many more programs. If I understand right you are needing to reload the OS onto your device. Here is the best way to do that using Apploader. First you will need to make sure you have the OS downloaded (here is the latest OS for your device) and installed on your computer. Then, if the OS is not from your carrier you will need to delete the vender files. Cara software blackberry, error 513, reload os, firmware blackberry. Blackberry error 513 reload software. Reload BlackBerry Device Software using BlackBerry Desktop Manager. To reload BlackBerry Device Software to a BlackBerry smartphone using BlackBerry Desktop Manager, follow these steps: Visit the web site. Click Check for Updates. Select and download the version of BlackBerry Device Software approved by your wireless service provider for use with the BlackBerry. You need to reload the soft ware connect your mobile to your pc.

Snark

Programmed by John Dunn for Atari, but ultimately unreleased. John would later go on to do Superman before leaving Atari. Snark was a combination Maze solver and shooter. Each game generated a new maze, and you were set upon by critters that you had to shoot in order to negotiate the maze.

According to John, Snark 'was my first game for Atari. It was not published while I was at Atari, and perhaps never was - I didn't track it. It had a video spin mode that caused the screen to color cycle really fast, and release was held up because there was some worry this would cause people to have seizures (I know, it's bogus - but this was the early days of video games, and that kind of intense color cycling was unknown territory).'

Snowplow Developed by VSS, Inc. for Sunrise Software. According to Leonard Herman, this game was shown at the 1984 Winter CES (along with Glacier Patrol, another Sunrise title that went unreleased). Leonard described the gameplay in his book 'ABC to the VCS': 'You operate a snowplow which must clear the eight horizontal rows of snow. Snow is cleared by merely moving your plow through it. Somewhere in each row you'll uncover a car which will then move across the row that it is in and must be avoided at the risk of losing a turn. When all the snow has been cleared, one of the six cars will flash on and off and you must get to it before time runs out while still avoiding the other cars. When the car has been reached, another car will begin to flash. After all six cars have been retrieved, you'll move on to a harder screen where you must again clear the snow.' After Sunrise Software folded, the rights to their 2600 catalog were apparently acquired by Telegames, who eventually released Glacier Patrol and reissued Quest for Quintana Roo in 1989. Yet for some reason, Snowplow was never released. What happened to the prototype that was shown at CES is not known, and thus far the game has never turned up in any form.

Solo

Solo was a 3-D flight simulation game by Broderbund. Although shown at the 1983 Summer CES show, the game was never released.

Super Pac-Man

According to an internal Atari memo preliminary coding was started on the 2600 version of Super Pac-Man. The memo lists the game as only being 5% complete, so it is doubtful a playable version of the game exists.

Tarzan

Port of the Colecovision game of the same name. Tarzan was developed by Wickstead Design (the same team behind the unreleased 2600 Pink Panther game). The game finished, but was unreleased due to it requiring a special chip for extra memory. A prototype of the game may exist with one of the programmers. An in-game screenshot, picture of the box, and a manual all exist.

Tank Blitz

Was to be the third and final game in the Milton Bradley Power Arcade series. Tank Blitz was shown at the 1984 Toy Fair along with its Armored Commander controller.

A picture of the cartridge with its controller can be seen here (thanks to Rom Hunter)

Target Omega Target Omega was a submarine simulation developed by Greg Easter for Atari. From Greg: “Another game which was only barely started was an extremely ambitious submarine simulator. There were three choices of views - periscope, radar and instruments. Your goal was to find enemy ships and sink them, as you would in most sub games, only there were additional complications of needing to keep track of fuel, battery power and sustainable pressure. I don’t remember too much of it now.” Given its early stage of development, it is unlikely that any copy of the game survived Those Little Buggers

Developed by Enter-Tech Ltd. for the Unitronics Expander system (which also went unreleased). The game was on a cassette and not a cartridge.

Treasure Hunt

Developed by Enter-Tech Ltd. for the Unitronics Expander system (which also went unreleased). The game was on a cassette and not a cartridge.

Underworld

Was to be a D&D type game by Commavid. A tape labeled Underworld is known to exist, and is believed to contain development source code. The current whereabouts of the tape are unknown.

Untitled Motorcycle Game #1 (real name unknown)

David Crane mentioned working on two unreleased games for Activision that involved riding a motorcycle. The first version was similar to Atari's Stunt Cycle where the player controlled a motorcycle that would jump over buses and other obstacles. According to David the game was abandoned because he ran out of objects (Player/Missile sprites) and couldn't display the buses properly.

Untitled Motorcycle Game #2 (real name unknown)

David Crane mentioned working on two unreleased games for Activision that involved riding a motorcycle. The second version was to be a motocross style game with a large segmented motorcycle that would realistically move up and down over the terrain. Like the first motorcycle game it was scrapped after David ran out of objects (Player/Missile sprites) due to the large realistic motorcycle.

- W -Wacko Port of the 1982 Bally Midway coin-op. This port was done by Tom DiDomenico while he was at Bally Midway but went unreleased.

Zookeeper

Perhaps one of the most famous missing prototypes, Zookeeper was a port of the 1982 Taito arcade game. Zookeeper was finished enough to have have been playable, and may have even been completed. The music/sound effects code for this game (by Robert Vieira) has been found, and is nearly arcade perfect. A video showing the graphics for this game has also surfaced.

Harem Atari 2600 Play

Return to Rumor Mill

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c-institute · 6 years

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Cartographic clout (part 1 of 3)

The importance of visualisation as a decision support and educational tool is obvious having been employed across knowledge domains like illustrations in biology, GANT charts in engineering, GIS applications, etc. It is reflected in education and practice in different contexts, be it a place; culture; a situation, or an artefact. We have all been enriched through visualisations, mapping method advances across fields, allowing the contexts to be clarified in new and inspired ways.

Critical cartography or mapping theory suggest the map to reflect more than reality, since it shapes our view of the physical, political and social worlds2. Cartography is a powerful instrument, affecting all who encounter the map2, be it layperson; researcher; analyst; technologist; capitalist; politician; historian; etc. The economic and political potency of maps are well illustrated in an early world map, the Mercator projection, consciously and subconsciously affecting our view of the world and its peoples. The map (by Gerardus Mercator, 1569), become the standard map projection for nautical navigation. Even today most electronic maps (Yahoo, Quest, Google, etc.) use variations of Mercator projection (Web Mercator)6. The challenge is Mercator projections distort the size of objects as it moves away from the equator. This causes certain land masses to appear much larger than others (e.g. Europe appears larger than Africa, despite Africa being 3 times larger; Brazil is 5 times bigger than Alaska, yet it appears bigger)6.

Despite these misrepresentations, Mercator  remained the  most common projection used as world map, consequently reinforcing falsehoods that influence people's view of the world. For example, seeing Europe and North America, as larger and more important than other regions. These map types (cylindrical projections), were denounced in 1989, as general purpose world maps6. This is an example of critical cartography (a set of mapping practices ground in critical theory), that sees maps as reflecting and perpetuating relations of power, usually in favour of a dominant group7. Maps and visualisations are then seen as cognitive artefacts, since they reinforce, complement  and strengthen our understanding. It is a critical tool in the creation and communication of knowledge2, being usefulness in complex contexts1, allowing for abstracting and visualisations that support abductive reasoning2 (hypotheses based upon incomplete information). From a systemic perspective mapping practices touch upon both theory and practice, allowing us to illustrate complex subjects, whilst also diffusing knowledge. However, like most practices, cartography must also include reflexivity1 or reflection in action3. This refers to the importance of reflecting upon what are offered, and to exercise critical reflection. This is vital in cartography, due to its potency as a tool - i.e. a map’s power, able to affect cultures, economics, and politics, whilst conceding the human propensity of bias (non-neutrality)1. The potency of maps as social and cultural constructions affects us all, which require both map-maker and map-user to appreciate these affects across society at a multiplicity of scales and a diversity of contexts. Since maps make the complex accessible and knowable, it is appealing to a range of disciplines outside of geography, thereby demanding that we strive toward a middle-ground between the positivist perspective of mapping (as truth-seeking tool), and an interpretivist paradigm (construct only)2. An indispensable quality of maps are their value in organising and blending vast amounts of data by depicting systemics of patterns and connections. Despite such value, we must always be cognisant that maps are abstractions of reality; a synthetic image that can never contain the richness of real-life (the map is not the territory). We must remember that when we process, organise or translate data into images, we invariably edit data via selection and omission strategies. This selection and removal of specific data, must always be reflected upon as map-makers and map-users. It refers to the implicit assumptions or judgements (bias) contained in the acts of omissions and deletions. In other words, the process of inclusion and exclusion reveals: the who, the what, and the why in any rendering2. As an example, using a search engine to search a topic yields a variety of results. When we use such results, we often forget that it has already been affected by the search engine’s criteria for sorting, grouping, and framing, i.e. shaping which data are included or excluded in our search results. The growing popularity of mapping practices demand a greater literacy of its underlying systemics, i.e. the non-neutral processes of map-making and the vitality of reflective practice1, 2. This forms a vital aspect of critical cartography, which challenges mechanistic cartography by linking geographic knowledge with power5.

Critical cartography sees maps as tools of oppression and power, having been historically produced by and for the ruling class7. To counter this, critical cartography introduced new mapping practices that challenge formal maps of the State7, adding alternate insights (e.g. indigenous cartographers) to Western versions. As example, there were no maps of the Americas, and versions developed by occupiers thereby defined the political, economic, and cultural trajectories. These maps made Western conquest and empires legitimate, exporting their beliefs, customs and practices, which continue until today.

References

1. Udemans, F., 2008, The golden thread: escaping socio-economic subjugation: an experiment in applied complexity science, Authorhouse UK;

2. Barness, J., & Papaelias, A., 2015, Critical making: Design and the digital humanities, Visible Language 49.3, the journal of visual communication research, special issue, December 2015;

3. Schon, D., A., 1984, The reflective practitioner, New York, NY: Basic Books Inc.;

4. Jones, P., and Jeremy Bowes, J., 2017, Rendering Systems Visible for Design: Synthesis Maps as Constructivist Design Narratives, Journal of design economics and innovation, Tongji University and Tongji University Press,  Elsevier B.V., http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/;

5. Kanarinka, 2006, Art-machines, Body-ovens, and map-recipes: Entries for a psychogeographic dictionary, Cartographic perspectives, Number 53, Winter, 2006;

6. Wikipedia, 2018, Mercator projection, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mercator_projection&oldid=862917060;

7. Firth, R., 2015, Critical Cartography, https://theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=13771, The Occupied Times of London (27), Retrieved 16 February 2018; 

8. Sevaldson, B., 2011, Giga-mapping: Visualisation for Complexity and systems thinking in design, Conference Paper, June 2011, ResearchGate;

#fuadudemans; c-institute; thegoldenthread; universality; Economics; Socio-economics; Poverty&Wealth; self development; cyberiagroup;#systemic maps; systemic tools

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joejstrickl · 7 years

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CES 2018: BlackBerry Expands Autonomous Driving With Baidu

BlackBerry CEO John Chen is making good on his promise to turn around the company, signing a slew of deals and transforming the brand into a cybersecurity enterprise player—Chen calls it the Enterprise of Things or EoT—from a failed mobile phone-maker.

New partners include Delphi, Denso, Qualcomm, Visteon and China’s Baidu, which is expanding BlackBerry’s dominance as an operating system for autonomous and connected vehicles.

In 2013, The Globe and Mail newspaper called Chen a “turnaround artist.””BlackBerry has software developed by its QNX division that enables machines to communicate with each other wirelessly, such as systems in automobiles that can interact with dealerships,” the Canadian newspaper noted.

“We have all the ingredients to become the leader in that embedded machine-to-machine space,” Chen told the paper. “I figure with our focus and [by thinking] long term, [by doing] the right thing today, a step at a time, I think we’re going to build tremendous value for shareholders.”

By Chen’s reckoning, that day has arrived.

youtube

In announcing an autonomous auto deal with Baidu ahead of CES 2018 on Wednesday, Chen told Bloomberg News that BlackBerry can no longer be considered a turnaround story.

“I would not call us a turnaround,” he told reporter Emily Chang. “We make money, we generate growth, we are very good, in particular in the cybersecurity enterprise business, particularly banks and governments and healthcare.” Enterprise billings last quarter, he added, grew 20%.

Chen was commenting on today’s news that BlackBerry has signed a deal to provide the operating system for Baidu’s autonomous vehicles program. The Chinese software giant has turned to the Canadian BlackBerry to help realize its ambitious dreams in the automotive space, one of a number of automotive partners that Chen is currently confirming. Chen will also speak at the North American International Auto Show later this month.

“In all cases, we are providing the safety and security operating systems for the autonomous vehicle,” he told Bloomberg. “One of my strategies for growth in taking this job was to create a new category for us to dominate in [the “enterprise of things”] and while I wouldn’t use the word ‘dominate,’ we are certainly doing extremely well in that category.”

Showing just how far BlackBerry has transformed from the mobile phone business, regarding other opportunities for future growth, Chen commented that “we are going to have a platform of security for EOT or IOT management.”

More details on BlackBerry’s deal with Baidu, from the press release:

BlackBerry Limited and Baidu, Inc. announced today that the two companies will collaborate to accelerate the deployment of connected and autonomous vehicle technology for automotive OEMs and suppliers worldwide.

The companies have signed a statement of intent to make BlackBerry QNX’s industry-leading ISO26262 ASIL-D certified safety operating system (OS) the foundation for Baidu’s Apollo autonomous driving open platform. Also, BlackBerry and Baidu will work together to integrate Baidu’s CarLife, the leading smartphone integration software for connected cars in China, as well as its conversational AI system DuerOS, and high definition maps to run on the BlackBerry QNX Car (Infotainment) Platform.

“BlackBerry QNX has established itself as the OS platform for safety-certified production-based systems,” said Li Zhenyu, General Manager of Intelligent Driving Group, Baidu. “We aim to provide automakers with a clear and fast path to fully autonomous vehicle production, with safety and security as top priorities. By integrating the BlackBerry QNX OS with the Apollo platform, we will enable carmakers to leap from prototype to production systems. Together, we will work toward a technological and commercial ecosystem for autonomous driving, intelligent connectivity, and intelligent traffic systems.”

“Joining forces with Baidu will enable us to explore integration opportunities for multiple vehicle subsystems including ADAS, infotainment, gateways, and cloud services,” said John Wall, Senior Vice President and GM of BlackBerry QNX. “Baidu has made tremendous strides in Artificial Intelligence and deep learning. These advancements paired with their high-definition maps and BlackBerry’s safety-critical embedded software and expertise in security will be crucial ingredients for autonomous vehicles.”

Announced by Baidu this past April, Apollo is an open platform that provides a comprehensive, secure, and reliable solution that consists of cloud services, an open software stack, and reference hardware and vehicle platforms. It supports all major features and functions of an autonomous vehicle. Apollo has now attracted over 70 global partners, including OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, developer platforms, and technology start-ups. The project was named after the historic lunar landing program to illustrate its scale and complexity.

As the leader in safety-certified, secure, and reliable software for the automobile industry, BlackBerry currently provides OEMs around the world with state-of-the-art cybersecurity technology to protect and mitigate, hardware, software, applications and end-to-end systems from cyberattacks. BlackBerry’s pedigree in security and continued innovation has led to recent automotive design wins with Delphi, Denso, Qualcomm, Visteon and others. To learn more about the BlackBerry QNX platform and why it is the most advanced embedded software platform on the autonomous vehicle market, please visit blackberry.com/qnx.

BlackBerry is a cybersecurity software and services company dedicated to securing the Enterprise of Things. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company was founded in 1984 and operates in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Middle East, Latin America and Africa. Baidu, meanwhile, is the leading Chinese language Internet search provider. Baidu aims to make a complex world simpler through technology.

The post CES 2018: BlackBerry Expands Autonomous Driving With Baidu appeared first on brandchannel:.

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markjsousa · 7 years

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CES 2018: BlackBerry Expands Autonomous Driving With Baidu

New partners include Delphi, Denso, Qualcomm, Visteon and China’s Baidu, which is expanding BlackBerry’s dominance as an operating system for autonomous and connected vehicles.

By Chen’s reckoning, that day has arrived.

youtube

In announcing an autonomous auto deal with Baidu ahead of CES 2018 on Wednesday, Chen told Bloomberg News that BlackBerry can no longer be considered a turnaround story.

More details on BlackBerry’s deal with Baidu, from the press release:

The post CES 2018: BlackBerry Expands Autonomous Driving With Baidu appeared first on brandchannel:.

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glenmenlow · 7 years

Text

BlackBerry Expands Autonomous Driving Partners With Baidu

New partners include Delphi, Denso, Qualcomm, Visteon and China’s Baidu, which is expanding BlackBerry’s dominance as an operating system for autonomous and connected vehicles.

By Chen’s reckoning, that day has arrived.

youtube

In announcing an autonomous auto deal with Baidu ahead of CES 2018 on Wednesday, Chen told Bloomberg News that BlackBerry can no longer be considered a turnaround story.

More details on BlackBerry’s deal with Baidu, from the press release:

The post BlackBerry Expands Autonomous Driving Partners With Baidu appeared first on brandchannel:.

from WordPress https://glenmenlow.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/blackberry-expands-autonomous-driving-partners-with-baidu/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

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technato · 7 years

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5G’s Olympic Debut

This year’s Winter Games promise a sneak peek at a high-bandwidth, low-latency wireless future

Illustration: MCKIBILLO

Welcome to the 5G Olympics, where Nathan Chen, the 18-year-old figure-skating phenom, has just landed another quadruple jump. Can’t see him well from your seat in the nosebleed section? No problem. Just slip on your 5G virtual reality headset for a 360-degree rink-side view! Now watch your step—we’re boarding the 5G bus to the next attraction. Check out the windows: They’re in fact transparent display screens providing ultrahigh-definition video—streamed live—from a hockey player’s headcam, from drones flying above the ski slopes, and from the cockpit of a bobsled barreling down an icy track at 100…120…150 kilometers per hour!

That’s what you can expect next month at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, if South Korea’s telecommunications companies are to be believed. KT Corp. (formerly Korea Telecom), the Games’ official sponsor, has announced plans for the first big test run of networking technologies that could herald peak download rates up to 100 times as fast as today’s 4G systems, with delays as low as 1 millisecond.

Not to be outdone, KT’s competitors SK Telecom and LG U+ are preparing their own 5G Olympic demos. Meanwhile, the South Korean government and the European Union have teamed up to fund still another trial, dubbed 5G Champion, that will include a broadband link between the Olympic Games and a 5G test-bed in Finland.

It’s understandable why they’re all jumping on this bandwagon. After all, there’s no bigger stage for showcasing the possibilities of a new technology than the Olympics. Just as past Games introduced the world to television (Berlin, 1936), satellite broadcasting (Tokyo, 1964), fiber optics (Los Angeles, 1984), and the CCD camera (Barcelona, 1992), Pyeongchang could give spectators a glimpse at the 5G future.

Photo: KT Corp.

Prep Work: This past July, engineers from KT Corp. installed 5G equipment at a ski jump being readied for the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

But the mobile industry may be promising more than it can deliver. And KT and SK Telecom have been suspiciously reticent to share details about exactly what they plan to demonstrate at the next Olympics. “I think hype is a good word” to describe what’s been advertised, says Michael Thelander, the president and founder of Signals Research Group.

5G networks, like their 4G LTE predecessors, will evolve in stages, with the first global standards set to arrive later this year. But consumers will likely have to wait until at least 2019 to buy 5G phones and tablets. “There’s no way in hell there are going to be commercial services [at the Pyeongchang Olympics] based on something that’s standardized,” Thelander says.

“At best,” says Henning Schulzrinne, a former advisor to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and a professor at Columbia University, “what will be demonstrated are some early lab prototypes that will look roughly similar to what 5G standards will eventually incorporate.”

Indeed, KT is deploying its pilot system based on its own “Pyeongchang 5G Specifications.” Exactly what that pilot system will entail is unclear. “We’ve been adding functionalities and capabilities as we go,” says Jawad Manssour of Ericsson-LG, a joint venture of Sweden’s Ericsson and South Korea’s LG Electronics, which is supplying the system’s “end-to-end” infrastructure, from the core network to the radio base stations.

What is clear is that the system will provide digital communications at 28 gigahertz, a spectral band that will likely play a big role in 5G networks because it offers vastly more bandwidth than traditional cellular channels below 6 GHz. Operators have long avoided such high frequencies—also known as millimeter waves—because they don’t pass as easily through objects or even the air.

“At best, what will be demonstrated are some early lab prototypes that will look roughly similar to what 5G standards will eventually incorporate”

5G pioneers have attacked this problem by sending and receiving signals using compact arrays of hundreds of antenna elements. By adjusting the signals sent to each element, they can direct radio energy in concentrated beams, increasing gain as the beams follow mobile users through what could be a very cluttered environment. This scheme, called massive MIMO, also allows base stations to use the same frequencies to connect with many users at once, thereby making more efficient use of limited spectrum.

In addition, Pyeongchang’s 5G-flavored digital networks will make good use of virtualization, whereby basic networking functions such as caching and routing—which traditionally require dedicated hardware—will instead be carried out by software. This setup lets operators reconfigure a network or deploy new services quickly and cheaply using virtual machines running on generic hardware. Virtualization will likely be common in 5G architectures, which will need to accommodate many different wireless products—including driverless cars, smart appliances, and industrial robots.

“You need so many pieces to fall in the right place at the right time to make things work,” Manssour says. The Pyeongchang trials will show if that’s now possible, but they are only the beginning. “It’s still early days,” he says. “With these precommercial systems, the goal is just to give users a feel of what they could get with 5G. What the commercial networks will be—we’ll have to wait and see.”

This article appears in the January 2018 print issue as “5G Goes for the Gold.”

5G’s Olympic Debut syndicated from http://ift.tt/2Bq2FuP

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itsworn · 7 years

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Giant 100-Photo Gallery of Inaugural Hurst Nationals at Carlisle

Many muscle cars were available with a gimmick in the late 1960s, but it was raw power that helped Oldsmobile and Hurst establish the street notoriety that made them among the most important examples to emerge from the era. Indeed, the Hurst brand was not limited to Olds, as the company was also involved in vehicle changes for Chrysler and AMC. However, the Olds connection, first with 455-inch conversions and later with dress-ups and power, was by far the most visible, and has been a focal point for the entirety of the muscle car hobby.

The inaugural 2017 Hurst Nationals, held at Carlisle Expo Center in July, showed them all off, as well as some of the late-model iron from Performance West Group, a number of specialty cars, and a grand selection of luminaries who had helped make the history. The event was held only a couple of blocks from the Carlisle Fairgrounds in central Pennsylvania, and a free shuttle ran between it and the annual All-Chrysler Nationals occurring at the same time. The Hurst show ran for two days and featured a select group of invitational cars on display inside, as well as outside participants in the large front parking lot, which had been secured solely for this show field. With basically every year of the Olds packaging on display, plus multiple examples of the SC/Ramblers from 1969, Chryslers from 1970, Pontiacs from select years, and PWG’s latest Dodge and Mustang builds with Hurst badging, the event could honestly be called epic and will be repeated next year, with a focus on the legendary 1968 Hurst Hemi drag cars on their 50th anniversary.

Meanwhile, former Hurst employees and other individuals on hand allowed owners and fans to hear tales from the past and get background on development thanks to historic seminars held daily. Hemi Under Glass pilot Bob Riggle came in from Arizona, and several of the guys involved in the construction and development of the package cars were there as well. Bill Campbell, who was the cofounder of Hurst-Campbell, inventors of the Jaws of Life life-saving tool, was able to attend, as did Howard Maseles, who once represented the company to sportsman racers. Missing was Linda Vaughn, who had planned to attend but was beset with health problems serious enough to require hospitalization. We hope she will be part of the 2018 follow-up, which will happen on July 13-14, 2018.

The outdoor show mixed a number of brands that were all approved to help showcase the Hurst packaging, including AMCs, Oldsmobiles, late-model Dodges, and a handful of assorted cars.

From among the number of excellent examples on hand, we liked this 1972 pace car edition convertible best for its historical interest. This car actually took the top three qualifiers for the 1972 Indy 500 on their parade lap during that year’s event, and the owners had a lot of authentic memorabilia with it.

The top qualifiers were listed on the car. Unfortunately only Bobby Unser survived through 1976 during the he-man racing era of the 1970s.

A real rarity at the event was the proposal car for the 1977 Hurst/Olds program, which was never constructed. This car, now owned by collectors Glen and Ann Marie Katterson, has a well-documented history. The planned 403-inch package died when Olds could not free up manufacturing capacity to build it. We think it would have been a contender for the king of the hill in 1977.

This beast is the prototype for Hurst’s 1970 Chrysler 300 program, with a custom-fitted decklid treatment, a specialized interior, Kelsey-Hayes custom rims with H70-15 Goodyear rubber, and more. Owned by Cecil Montgomery of Canada, it is in need of restoration but shows excellent potential and drew a lot of attention even in its present state.

Jack Hooks drove in with this 1975 Hurst/Olds. That year was a high-water mark in terms of Hurst/Olds production, with more than 2,500 examples made. His W-25 car, as the earlier W-31 package had been to the Cutlass line, denoted a 350ci engine under the hood. Coupled to the extras from Hurst, the sticker on these cars topped $5,000 even in the more base forms; T-tops were standard.

SC/Ramblers are nasty cars, and a number of them were here, including this example owned by Paula and Steven Ward of Dallas. It showed some of the changes made for the race environment and had a great display of extras in an ISCA-type display surround.

The Ward’s SC/Rambler display was fantastic, with lots of detailing to both car and accessories, including special matched SC/Rambler fluid containers and vintage race team clothing with AMC patches that was hung up in the trunk.

Bob Riggle, noted longtime pilot of the Hemi Under Glass and best known now for giving Jay Leno the actual ride of his life, was among the personalities from Hurst’s heritage on hand. Like many, Riggle came from a long distance to be at the show. Several seminars were well attended during the event.

Of the Hurst-equipped cars displayed outside, few could compare to Orvil Osche’s 1965 Pontiac GTO with its Royal Bobcat modifications and great Hurst wheels with deluxe spinners. The tri-power, four-speed car with white interior and Royal Pontiac identification was a terrific combo.

A look at the impressive detail on the Osche Goat. The Hurst wheels were not marketed for very long, due in part to their high price, but were probably among the highest-quality street rims available at the time. To see a minty set on a car, especially with the extra-cost centers, is a real treat.

The 1968 455ci Toronado-powered W-30 models were the first H/Os unleashed onto America’s boulevards. This spectacularly restored example with original driveline and 47,000 miles is now in the collection of Charles Lingenfelter, brother of late racer John. Charles also had two 1990s-era Firebirds on display that John had done for Hurst.

In addition to the trio lined up indoors, two more of the SC/Ramblers were on display outside. The special paint and functional hoodscoops on these cars helped give them a lot of notoriety in 1969, and they are not easy to find or restore today.

Sal Barberi’s highly optioned 1969 Hurst/Olds in our lead photo displayed its window sticker and the suggested cost of the Hurst upgrades: $4,831.69 for the car as delivered from the factory plus $683.94 for the Hurst equipment. In 1969 dollars, this particular car topped out at more than $5,500 brand new, which was above the cost of most convertible muscle cars!

Most odd of all Hurst machines were the 1971 Jeepster Commando models, of which fewer than 100 were reportedly built. With a V-6 and four-wheel drive, all-around performance was the goal. Two were here, one outside and one inside. This example, owned by Lee Tidwell of Maryland, was once a plow vehicle and took five years to restore.

Howard Maseles was noted for his own sportsman drag racing efforts but also worked for Hurst in the 1960s. Among his display items were rare snapshots he personally took that showed the original Hurst Hemi drag cars being built back in 1968.

A couple of Maseles’ snapshots show the Hurst Barracudas and Darts being assembled in March 1968. None of those cars attended this year, as their 50th anniversary in 2018 will make them a centerpiece for next year’s event.

Here is the front entrance to the center where the show was held. Two blocks away, Carlisle’s All-Chrysler Nationals was going in full force. Shuttles kept the events connected.

Meanwhile, through the large windows, other Hurst-themed vehicles arrived for the outside display each day during the Friday-Saturday event.

Late-model vehicles wearing the Hurst name have proven to be popular thanks to the efforts of Larry Weiner and the Performance West Group. Here is a pair of Hurst-badged Mustangs, with the 2017 R-code prototype facing the camera topped with a Kenne-Bell supercharger and 750 “Demon-eating” horsepower on tap.

Larry Weiner (in yellow shirt) gives an onlooker a chance to sit in the 2017 GSS Challenger, a Hurst identity car he is creating in conjunction with Mr. Norm Krause that features unique upgrades, some akin to the 1971 ’Cuda, and enough power to give the aforementioned blown 2017 Mustang a run for its money.

Mathew Markline had a great example of the 1980s Hurst/Olds revival, with a 1984 example that featured T-tops, a red interior, and the Lightning Rod shifter setup. That year would mark the final appearance of the nameplate until the 21st century.

The Markline car as seen through the open T-top showed off its distinctive interior. The Lightning Rod package required a special pamphlet to explain what lever did what. Perhaps attempting to emulate the multistick design of a Lenco, it remains perhaps the most exotic floor shifter to ever come through a new car dealership in North America.

Miss Hurst Linda Vaughn was dealing with health issues or would have been here. In her absence, a number of owners showcased this figurine of her from back in the glory days. We hope she will be able to make the reunion in 2018.

Showing the legacy of Hurst performance is still alive, even if it is through tuner orders rather than the OE production market, these late-model versions will help continue the heritage of the Hurst name.

Oh, Chryslers Too?

We would be remiss if we didn’t mention what is one of the most important shows on the annual Chrysler-oriented schedule, Carlisle’s legendary All-Chrysler Nationals, which in 2017 played host to the second-largest crowd in the event’s long history. As always, the T and Y buildings were filled, with an FM3 Panther Pink invitational, a class of 1967 display including Super Stocks, a GTX heritage gathering, and an amazing four-door “what if?” Barracuda whose builders had even reproduced a factory brochure with four-door car illustrations. Of course, thousands of cars and tens of thousands of attendees filled out the show fields, car corral, Dodge thrill ride display, and swap meet.

This year we chose to focus on the first-ever Hurst event, but even without that going on there was no way we could have seen the entire All-Chrysler Nationals. The annual Mopar Hall of Fame banquet on Saturday evening was a special blend this year. Hosted by Mopar Collectors Guide and emceed by Mr. Four-Speed, Herb McCandless, the event honored the Rod Shop, Direct Connection, engineer Willem Weertman, all the former Hurst-employed attendees, and more. A great time was had by all!

It seemed like every one of the thousands of attendees at Carlisle had an opinion about Frank Waldon’s just-completed 1970 four-door “what if?” Barracuda. Built on a G-series Satellite base by ECS Automotive, it was a remarkably well-executed project. Here he and builder Steve Been show off the brochure reproduction with illustrations.

Seen here at the Mopar Hall of Fame banquet is Chrysler’s top powerplant engineer Willem Weertman, who described the effort he put into creating the first race Hemi engines. Designer Tom Hoover said this engine survived to win the 1964 Daytona 500 only because of Weertman’s tireless efforts working around the clock at the foundry in Indianapolis just weeks before the event. In his 90s, Weertman came in from Washington State for the honor.

For the man with everything carried in a Haliburton suitcase, dreams could come true. Here was a real 1971 Hemi ’Cuda in the car corral, with an asking price of a mere $449,000.

You have no Haliburton suitcase full of Benjamins? Among the treasures in the swap meet was this Golden Ram GTX pedal car. We do not know if Chrysler had anything to do with it, but it was a perfect item for the Mopar man cave. Hey, ever see another one?

Yep, you can find it at Carlisle. Most car shows have a row for Mopars, most Mopar shows have a row for B-bodies, but where else can you see a row of nothing but 1970 Chargers? See you here next year!

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gaymensfashion · 7 years

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From The Archives – Fall 2017 Edition

Welcome to our fall 2017 issue of From the Archives, a behind-the-scenes look at the ins and outs of the work we do here, and the unusual, amazing and always-interesting fun facts and tidbits we discover along the way.

The exhibition Revolution, featuring our ’67 patched 505® jeans and other Levi’s®, opened in Canada to great reviews at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. I interviewed Eureka Lab Sewing Technician My Hyuhn about how to craft a pair of 501® jeans; added new items to the Archives like a women’s 1940s short-horn shirt; and still found time to dig into the collection with designers for inspiration. Here’s a peek at LS&Co.’s latest heritage happenings.

-Tracey

Now Showing

Goldrush Levi Strauss Museum | Buttenheim, Bavaria Through November 5, 2017

At the Levi Strauss Museum Buttenheim, the birthplace of Levi Strauss, the special exhibit Goldrush – The Boom of the American West focuses on the Californian gold rush, which – beginning in 1848 – changed a whole continent.

Revolution Montreal Museum of Fine Arts | Montreal, Canada Through October 9, 2017

A musical odyssey that explores the ideals and aspirations of the late 1960s as expressed in music, film, design and fashion—like Levi’s® garments.

New Arrivals

Western Short-Horn Shirt. Vintage Collector Erin Zabel found this colorful 1940s Levi’s® Western short-horn shirt, whch she once made a stylish impression wearing it at a Blacksmithing Competition many moons ago. The shirt is the latest addition to our Archives. Erin owns an organic farm in Texas, where she and her husband craft bronze artwork.

You Asked, We Investigated…

Q. I bought this [screen print] in a secondhand store here in Stockholm, Sweden. I was so surprised at the detailed artwork on the print and the colors. I researched and have found that the style must be around 1967 – 1969, so in the time Levi’s® expanded to Europe, but could also be 1976-1977 when Levi’s® made the commercial advertising of the, Leader of the Pack. Any ideas?

A. This piece dates to 1976. It was created by London-based Illustrator Mick Brownfield who created a series to accompany the Leader of the Pack television commercial (and song) of the same name. “They now seem prehistoric in style and execution,” says Mick, “they really are a period piece.” See the advertisement here.

Fan Mail—Little Levi’s® Span Generations

Lifelong Levi’s® fan Ken Newell of Virginia sent us photos of a pair of Levi’s® jeans his parents purchased for him in the mid-1950s. When he outgrew them, they were stored away until his son Brennan was born in 1984. “The same jeans were taken out of storage and he wore them as well,” said Ken. The Newells pulled out the jeans when Grandson Grayson turned 2 years old this year. Says Ken, “Just thought you’d like to know about a 61-year-old pair of your jeans that have been worn by three generations and are still going strong.”

Employees On Record

Eureka Lab Sewing Technician My Huynh spent a morning in the Archives demonstrating how to use a collection of historic tools. She also explained why it takes eight machines (from an overlock to a riveting machine) and three different colors of thread to make a pair of 501® jeans. A native of Vietnam, My worked briefly at our Valencia Street Factory.

This Year in Levi Strauss & Co. History

35th Anniversary of Levi’s Plaza

This year marks the 35th Anniversary of Levi’s® Plaza, our headquarters in San Francisco. Landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, who also designed Ghirardelli Square, U.C. Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza and the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C., created a setting that was inspired by Yosemite and other natural areas.

Want to keep up with the LS&Co. Archives and other cool LS&Co. heritage news? Follow Tracey on Twitter, @TraceyPanek, and stay tuned to Unzipped!

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: A History of Science Fiction’s Future Visions

Installation view of Into the Unknown at the Barbican in London (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

LONDON — The 1982 film Blade Runner imagined 2019 Los Angeles as a dystopia of noirish neon and replicants, robots sent to do hard labor on off-world colonies. It’s a future in which engineered beings are so close to humans as to make the characters question the very nature of life. We’re now just a couple of years from this movie’s timeline, and although our robots are still far from mirroring humanity, our science fiction continues to envision giant leaps in technology that are often rooted in contemporary concerns of where our innovations are taking us.

Patrick Gyger, curator of Into the Unknown: A Journey through Science Fiction at the Barbican Centre, told Hyperallergic that, for him, science fiction “allows creators to look beyond the horizon of knowledge and play with concepts and situations.” The exhibition is a sprawling examination of the genre of science fiction going back to the 19th century, with over 800 works. These include film memorabilia, vintage books, original art, and even a kinetic sculpture in a lower-level space by Conrad Shawcross. “In Light of The Machine” has a huge, robotic arm twisting within a henge-like circle of perforated walls, so visitors can only glimpse its strange dance at first, before moving to the center and seeing that it holds one bright light at the end of its body.

Film still from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (courtesy the Roger Grant Archive)

Most of Into the Unknown is concentrated in the Barbican’s Curve space, a winding gallery with a high ceiling that permits objects to be stacked to the ceiling. They range from spacesuits worn in Star Trek and Moon (2009), to the robot TARS from Interstellar (2014) and Ava from Ex Machina (2015), to drawings by H. R. Giger for the Alien series and paintings by James Gurney for his Dinotopia books. The post-war architecture of the Barbican is a fitting setting for Into the Unknown, with its concrete angles and utopian spirit. In conjunction with the show, Penguin Classics released a series of limited-edition science fiction books with Barbican architecture on their covers. The brutalist conservatory graces H. G. Well’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, and two of the triangular towers appear on George Orwell’s 1984.

Throughout the exhibition, niche and popular culture are juxtaposed, chronicling how science fiction emerged as a cultural force in the 20th century. Manuscripts by Jules Vernes hold incredible insights into how much research the author put into works such as Around the World in Eighty Days (1872), and an adjacent display of dinosaur models sculpted by Ray Harryhausen for 1960s stop-motion shows how, by the mid-20th century, films were using recent scientific knowledge for entertainment. Artwork like Dino De Laurentiis’s storyboard drawings for the Sandworm battle in the 1984 Dune (and some nearby concept art by Giger for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unrealized version), testify to artists’ presence in shaping science fiction. An array of aerospace industry advertisements from the 1950s and ’60s feature fantastic space crafts similar to those in Soviet postcards illustrated by Andrey Sokolov and Aleksey Leonov (a cosmonaut who created the first artwork in space).

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Gyger noted that the fact that the genre “has been so impactful” cannot be separated from the link to “its context of production and to the mass market that makes it flourish.” Over the years, this has involved pulp magazines, trading cards, comics, and paperbacks, often aimed at young audiences, or presented as a cheap thrills.

Certainly science fiction is incredibly popular at the moment — see the success of Westworld, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Black Mirror (which is featured in the exhibition through a six-foot video installation based on the unnerving virtual world in the episode “Fifteen Million Merits“). While these series explore serious issues in our reality, there’s still a tendency to overlook them as serious art (unless you count The Lord of the Rings, no science fiction film has won the “Best Picture” Oscar, for instance). Into the Unknown might not sway anyone without a curiosity for science fiction, being that you’re immediately immersed in a constellation of spaceships, dinosaurs, alien monsters, and robots. But for those with an interest, it demonstrates how these themes developed from “low to “high” art.

Postcard of “On the first Lunar cosmodrome” (1968), by Andrey Sokolov and Aleksey Leonov (courtesy Moscow Design Museum)

Andrey Sokolov and Aleksey Leonov, postcard series from the set “A man in space” (1965), offset printing on paper, full-color (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

The exhibition shows, but does not dwell on, who has been left out of a history mostly shaped by white men (there are rare exceptions on view, like the “Astro Black” video installation by Soda_Jerk that muses on Sun Ra’s theories of Afrofuturism). It would be worthwhile to spend more time on figures who broke through these barriers, such as author Octavia Butler. As discussed on a recent podcast from Imaginary Worlds, her black characters were sometimes portrayed as white on her book covers to make them more appealing to science fiction readers. The exhibition could also have a deeper context for why certain veins of science fiction are prominent in particular eras, and perhaps question why we don’t have a lot of science fiction narratives on current crises like climate change. For instance, the much smaller 2016 exhibition Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction 1780–1910 from the Smithsonian Libraries compared milestones like Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus with physician Luigi Galvani’s “animal electricity” experiments on animating dead frog legs, and highlighted how Jules Verne channeled the doomed Franklin expedition in his 1864 book The Adventures of Captain Hatteras.

Nevertheless, having an exhibition like Into the Unknown at a mainstream space like the Barbican is significant, showing the art world appreciates science fiction beyond kitsch. And science fiction continues to be one of our important portals for thinking about the ramifications of our technological choices, and where they might take us. There’s a reason that 1984 is now having a popular Broadway production in a year of “alternative facts,” and why Black Mirror episodes such as “Nosedive,” where a person’s worth is judged by their social media “likes,” resonate so deeply.

“It is the genre of ‘what if,’ shedding light on our hopes and fears for a future closely linked to our present and our environment,” Gyger said. “In doing so it inspires and warns us, while entertaining us, creating a plethora of iconography, and leaving a deep mark on culture.”

Dinosaurs designed for films in the 1950s and ’60s by Ray Harryhausen (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Installation view of Into the Unknown at the Barbican in London (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Glass plates for magic lantern depicting scenes from Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days (Paris, 1885), lithographic transfer on glass (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Albert Badoureau, “Le Titan Moderne: Notes et observations remises à Jules Verne pour la rédaction de son roman sans dessus dessous” (“The Modern Titan: Notes and observations presented to Jules Verne for the writing of his novel The Purchase of the North Pole or Topsy-Turvy,” 1888), manuscript page (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

“L’an 2000” (“The year 2000,” 1901), print on cardboard; a collection of uncut sheets for confectionery cards showing life imagined in the future (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Amazing Stories #1 (July 1933), Agence Martienne (courtesy Maison d’Ailleurs/Agence Martienne)

8mm film reel boxes (1949–67) (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

George Pal Productions, Luna spaceship miniature from the film Destination Moon (1950), mixed media (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Installation view of Into the Unknown at the Barbican in London (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Martian models by Ray Harryhausen for War of the Worlds (1949) and First Men in the Moon (1964) (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Anubis and Horus helmets by Patrick Tatopoulos for Stargate (1994), fiberglass with metallic surface (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Art by H. R. Giger for Alien III (1992) (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

The Original Science Fiction Stories #1 (November 1958), Agence Martienne (courtesy Maison d’Ailleurs/Agence Martienne)

Dino De Laurentiis, series of three Sandworm battle storyboards for the film Dune (1984), pencil on vellum adhered to board (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Magazine cover, Amazing Stories #1 (April 1926), Agence Martienne (courtesy Maison d’Ailleurs/Agence Martienne)

Theta space station miniature from the TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century(1979–81); Kane (John Hurt) space suit from the film Alien (1979) (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Trevor Paglen, “Orbital Reflector (Diamond Variation)” (2017), freestanding model for inflatable spacecraft; aluminum, stainless steel, acrylic (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Conrad Shawcross,” In Light of The Machine,” kinetic installation (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Into the Unknown: A Journey through Science Fiction continues through September 1 at the Barbican Centre (Silk Street, London, UK).

The post A History of Science Fiction’s Future Visions appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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joejstrickl · 7 years

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BlackBerry Expands Autonomous Driving Partners With Baidu

New partners include Delphi, Denso, Qualcomm, Visteon and China’s Baidu, which is expanding BlackBerry’s dominance as an operating system for autonomous and connected vehicles.

By Chen’s reckoning, that day has arrived.

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In announcing an autonomous auto deal with Baidu ahead of CES 2018 on Wednesday, Chen told Bloomberg News that BlackBerry can no longer be considered a turnaround story.

More details on BlackBerry’s deal with Baidu, from the press release:

The post BlackBerry Expands Autonomous Driving Partners With Baidu appeared first on brandchannel:.

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technato · 7 years

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5G’s Olympic Debut

This year’s Winter Games promise a sneak peek at a high-bandwidth, low-latency wireless future

Illustration: MCKIBILLO

Photo: KT Corp.

Prep Work: This past July, engineers from KT Corp. installed 5G equipment at a ski jump being readied for the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

“At best, what will be demonstrated are some early lab prototypes that will look roughly similar to what 5G standards will eventually incorporate”

This article appears in the January 2018 print issue as “5G Goes for the Gold.”

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nofomoartworld · 8 years

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Art F City: We Went to Mexico: General Idea at Museo Jumex Restored Our Faith in Art For Fuck’s Sake

General Idea: Broken Time Museo Jumex Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 303, Colonia Granada, Ciudad de México, D.F.

What’s On View: A retrospective of the Canadian Collective, General Idea (comprised of artists AA Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge Zontal.) A collection of works spanning two floors of the museum arranged semi-chronologically from their 25-year-long career in a vast array of formats including installations, video art, painting, publications, and performance.

Installation View

Molly: It’s magical when an artist collective syncs so well that their daily performance grows into a personal mythology, especially one that spans such an extensive length of time. I feel like I hit every point on my emotional spectrum walking through the retrospective (I should probably forewarn that I am a General Idea super fan.) General Idea strove to create create humorous, political, and poignant work together, even in times of illness and crisis. The world seems so bleak lately that I feel like I need to run 1 mile, go to yoga class, and take a shot of tequila just to prepare myself to read the news each day. Walking through the exhibition I felt inspirited in a way I feel like I haven’t since the inauguration.

Documentation of the 1971 Miss General Idea Pageant.

Michael: I had a similar thought while we were there: this is the exhibition so many artists in our generation need to see right now. Over the past few months, there’s been all this self-doubt about the role of artists in times of crisis and whether or not an “art practice” is worthwhile.

It’s beyond inspirational to see that General Idea (known for their AIDS art-activism) spent the decades before the epidemic throwing absurd drag beauty pageants, painting dogs fucking, doing wacky Yoko Ono-esque text pieces, and generally having weirdo fun. When the time came to mobilize for a cause, they had all these creative experiences, strategies, and vocabulary from years of experimenting. That’s not to say organizing for an absurdist artwork is important just as “practice” for mobilizing for a political cause—I think they were complementary processes, vital in different, overlapping ways. Never have I left an exhibition with such a strong urge to make weird “objective-less” art again, confident that it wouldn’t be contrary to something “productive”.

“Friends – A Preliminary Series (Xerox),” 1970.

One of the first pieces we saw, for example, was “Friends – A Preliminary Series (Xerox)” from 1970, which comprises a bunch of xerox prints of friends’ penises (as if they had laid on top of a flatbed copy machine) affixed to blocks on the floor like a minimalist installation. Something about it seems so obvious, but it’s so good. The piece is just so perfect and wrong for the time in which it was made—in the heyday of squares-on-the-floor minimalism, nearly a decade after Warhol’s “Thirteen Most Wanted Men” and nearly a decade before punk hit the art world in earnest. And yet it was clearly so personal too.

“Mondo Cane Kama Sutra,” 1984.

Molly: The sheer amount of work included in the show makes it incredibly personal, almost like you are experiencing it with them. Midway through we entered a room with a series of large paintings depicting pink, orange, and yellow poodles having threesomes in various positions. In the middle of the room there were two videos displayed, “Shut the Fuck Up Part I & II.” I think I have watched “Shut the Fuck Up Part II” about ten times since we have left the show. It’s a humorous illustration of how often artists, especially queer, can feel almost forced to create extravagant persona’s for the benefit of others. In the video General Idea members and friends perform a choreographed ballet in zentai suits of various dog breeds, making a mockery of the pampered dog’s “instinct to please.” After the dance members of General Idea, dressed the multicolor poodles in their paintings displayed on the walls of the museum, discuss the media’s insistence that the artist must “live to please and please to live.” The poodle stating “Even if you’re not in drag they always find a way to dress you up” was a clever mockery on the media’s need to make a spectacle of artists.

“Imagevirus Series,” 1989-1991.

In contrast, the final two rooms that directly addressed the AIDS crisis were heartbreaking, especially knowing Partz and Zontal were diagnosed at the time the work was made and eventually passed in 1994. The first room was a collection of reproduced photo albums that once belonged to a man who died from AIDS- related complications in Venezuela in 1988, titled “Maracaibo”. The pictures displayed various nude lovers, mostly soldiers, from various ethnicities and classes. The final room was a series of paintings, mimicking Robert Indiana’s original “LOVE” works from the 1960’s. Robert Indiana’s original work was serialized and reproduced in almost every fashion imaginable, shotglasses, keychains, dinner plates, etc. The logo permeated through culture almost like a virus. General Idea’s hope was mirroring Indiana’s original design the logo would “play a part of the virus itself” and create widespread awareness. The final display was four human sized AZT capsules next to wall lined with miniature versions of the pill. When you first walk into the exhibition you can see the coffin-like AZT tablets in the distance to the left but I was not prepared for the emotional weight they would carry after feeling like I had a walk through of the artist’s lives.

“Maracaibo,” copies of a found photo album, 1988.

Michael: I’m still not sure how I feel about that piece “Maracaibo”. It’s obviously this personal fetishistic collection, but the obsessiveness of it, when reproduced and contextualized like this, evokes the pseudo-scientific mythology of “patient zero” in the epidemic, as if its a specimen in the study of promiscuity or something. It’s further complicated by the accompanying text, which lists and explains an absurd variety of archaic Latin American racial classifications, each based on the percentages of European/Indigenous/African ancestry a person had.

But I think what really sets this retrospective apart from other General Idea exhibitions I’ve seen is the focus on the time the artists spent living rather than dying. I’m thinking specifically of a show I saw at the Warhol Museum way back in 2005. I know that’s a long time ago, and my memory is hazy, but I pretty much exclusively remember their AIDS-related work from that exhibition. That’s not a criticism, obviously, but seeing the cheeky joie de vivre in everything GI did before the epidemic made the emotional impact of their later work so much more potent.

“Artist’s Conception: Miss General Idea 1971”

Molly: I also have never seen such a focus on General Idea’s early work, which toys with glamour and sexuality in a simultaneously frivolous and thoughtful manner. I was especially excited to see the wall of different artist’s embodying Miss General Idea. Miss General Idea was a part of the collective’s mythology who weaved her way through various projects throughout their career but I believe the “Miss General Idea Pageant” in 1971 was her first appearance. The Miss General Idea Pageant was a faux beauty pageant where sixteen artists were mailed entry kits containing pageant rules and a basic brown dress. The thirteen artists who applied were to take photos embodying “Miss General Idea” in the provided dress. She was their ultimate beauty queen and blank canvas. I like to think of Miss General idea as a spectacle that artist’s could project their perceptions and parodies of glamour and queerness onto. I loved the choice to surround all the different incarnations of Miss General Idea, both male and female artists, around a blown up letter from an artist who clearly was lost on the humor in the project, calling it a “chauvinist pig idea.”

“Reconstructing Futures,” 1977.

Michael: Confession: I totally bought the “Miss General Idea” drag queen tote bag in the gift shop with the intention of making a back patch for a studded vest. Hands-down one of my favorite of their strange 1970s projects/happenings. I’m so into how well these sort-of ephemeral art events and interventions translated to documentation that felt like special artworks unto themselves. Everything lives on as posters, handwritten note cards, down to photos of an “installation” that consisted of reflecting light onto various walls. Probably the wildest documentation and recycling of imagery I’ve seen—1977’s “Reconstructing Futures”, in which they burned the then-futuristic “1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion”, a ziggurat containing ephemera from the pageants, and presented the ruins as an installation.

“fin de siècle,” 1990.

Molly: Walking out of the museum we passed a massive installation of glacial structures with three little seal stuffed animals placed in the corner. I honestly didn’t realize it was a part of the show until we left but it makes perfect sense that it was self portraiture. Throughout their career General Idea took portraits embodying the same characters, always just the three of them, whether it be the goth night school graduates, sexy babies, doctors, or poodles, parodying archetypes in a playful yet sardonic manner. The seal installation was playful and cute (Michael can vouch, I was squealing) but after reading the title it also seemed like a perfect monument to their legacy, “fin de siècle” or “the end of an era,” three seals sticking together in a beautiful but lonesome and harsh environment.

Highlights:

“One Day of AZT,” 1991 (foreground) “One Year of AZT,” 1991 (background).

“Nightschool,” 1986.

Miss Paige at The Miss General Idea Pageant in 1971, rocking Princess Leia hair years before “A New Hope” came out!

“Reconstructing Futures,” 1977.

“Jockey Short Shopping Bag,” 1991/1998.

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