The Use of CAD/CAM Systems in Manufacture

Theoretical and academic work on CAD/CAM systems has supposed that the standard NC and APT-like interfaces would be adopted. Recent experience has shown that most economically viable industrial CAD/CAM systems are not following this pattern. A plea is made for modularity as a means of slashing development costs and facilitating technology transfer

The "Totem Poles" of Saint-Roch: Graffiti, Material Culture and the Re-Appropriation of a Popular Landscape

In 1972–73 the Dufferin–Montmorency highway was thrust through the working-class neighbourhood of the Parish of Notre-Dame in the Saint-Roch district of Quebec City, expropriating the homes of nearly two thousand people and raising an entire parish. Traffic flow improved, but the rows of support columns for the suspended highway, as the parish priest of Notre-Dame remarked, passed directly over the heads of the poor, replacing the paroisse with a new religious icon: the "cement totem pole." In time, this poignant metaphor, retold through the graffiti of local artists working beneath the overpasses of the highway, invested an anti-establishment icono-graphic power in the concrete highway supports. Recently, however, the "totem poles" of Saint-Roch have become the object of attention of Quebec as the city prepares for its four-hundredth birthday. While Quebec acts to promote renewal and national festivities in 2008, its use of state-aided subventions to replace graffiti with aesthetically-pleasing street murals in Saint-Roch threatens, as in the 1970s, to disorganise the area, this time through the gentrification and eradication of the "totem poles" of Saint-Roch. Résumé En 1972-1973, l'autoroute Dufferin-Montmorency s'est imposée au voisinage de la paroisse ouvrière Notre-Dame dans le quartier Saint-Roch de Québec, causant l'expropriation d'environ deux mille personnes et la suppression d'une paroisse complète. La fluidité de la circulation s'est améliorée mais, aux dires du curé de la paroisse Notre-Dame, les rangées de piliers soutenant l'autoroute suspendue s'élevaient directement au-dessus de la tête des pauvres, remplaçant la paroisse par une nouvelle icône : les « mâts totémiques en béton ». À l'époque, cette métaphore dramatique, évoquée par les graffitis des artistes locaux travaillant sous les viaducs, conférait aux piliers une puissance ico no graphique contre le pouvoir établi. Ces derniers temps, toutefois, les « mâts totémiques » de Saint-Roch retiennent l'attention de Québec qui se prépare à célébrer ses 400 ans. Alors que la ville prend des mesures pour promouvoir son renouveau et ses festi vités nationales en 2008, l'utilisation qu'elle fait des subventions de l'État, en remplaçant les graffitis par des murales à l'esthétique engageante dans le quartier Saint-Roch, menace de bouleverser le secteur, comme en 1970, mais cette fois par l'em bour geoisement du quartier et l'éradication des « mâts totémiques » de Saint-Roch

Satellite-Host Tradeoffs in Computer-Aided Design Systems

Computer-aided design is the generic term for a rapidly proliferating set of techniques which have become mandatory for all who wish to maintain their competitive positions in an increasing number of industries. CAD practitioners in advanced technology industries such as aerospace and electronics are usually highly sophisticated in computer usage and therefore able to configure their own CAD environments to suit their requirements. Those, however, who are relatively new to computers, are faced with a bewildering set of choices over which they have to make decisions. Should they have a cheap terminal linked to a remote time-sharing bureau? Should they attempt to do their whole design job on a dedicated, medium-sized in-house computer? Or should they invest in a high capability, intelligent terminal backed up by access to a central (or network-distributed) number-crunching and data-bank facility? What graphic facilities should they use? A drum plotter, a storage-tube display, interactive refresh graphics unit, hardware rotation, conic generation, zooming, are all choices that are presented to them and the manufacturers' praise of their own line is often more confusing than helpful. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, IIASA, has recently embarked on a World Survey of CAD, one of whose aims has been to provide guidance to would-be users on the establishment of CAD facilities suited to their needs. In this work IIASA has relied heavily on the analysis of the activity phases in CAD, currently being conducted by W.G. 5.2 (Computer-Aided Design) of IFIP (The International Federation for Information Processing)

Almanacs and the New Middle Class: New England and Nova Scotian Influences and Middle-Class Hegemony in Early Prince Edward Island

The dichotomous messages found in the almanacs of Prince Edward Island in the early nineteenth century reveal much about the emergence of an often conservative and yet commercially oriented middle class in the colony. A close analysis of almanacs clearly indicates the presence of intricate sets of socio-economic relationships between this rising middle class and the humbler classes. The editor’s choice of materials was intended for two distinct audiences: the underclasses of tenants and labourers, who were encouraged to be industrious and were forewarned of the results of indolence; and an upper class which was in a position to benefit from advice on labour management and capitalist relations.Les messages dichotomiques trouvés dans las almanachs de l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard du début du XIXe siècle en disent long sur l’émergence, dans la colonie, d’une classe moyenne souvent conservatrice, mais commerçante. Une analyse serrée des almanachs montre clairement la présence de toiles complexes de liens socioéconomiques entre cette classe moyenne montante et les classes plus humbles. Le choix documentaire des directeurs visait deux auditoires distincts : les classes marginales de locataires et d’ouvriers non qualifiés, que l’on encourageait au zèle et que l’on mettait en garde contre les résultats de l’indolence et de la classe supérieure, qui pouvait tirer profit des conseils qu’on leur prodiguait sur la gestion de la main-d’oeuvre et les relations capitalistes