2015-05-09

Unsheathed

One of the fun, and by fun here I mean basically the opposite of fun, but one of the fun things about the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is putting yourself in the world and trying to think about how realistically you could overthrow The Party and bring liberty back to Oceania. It's definitely not an easy task.

So that's why I so enjoyed this Stack Exchange question about how to write some subversive computer code in Orwell's nightmare-inspiring universe.

You are a programmer for the Party and are tasked with writing a program for the telescreens. It should output pro-party messages, and you have chosen the ones shown in task 1. below. However, you have recently begun to despise the Party, and you want the program to spark a revolution. So, you make the program say "Down with Big Brother!". You must give yourself time to escape, as you will be tortured once people realise what your program does, so you make it act as a "timebomb" that will explode after you have gone to safety.

Note: This will not spark a revolution, but you are in such a frenzy of hatred towards the party that you think it will actually make a difference.

Task
Write a program which:
  1. before 14/09/2014, will always output the following lines on a rotation (i.e. prints one line, waits 10 seconds, prints next line, etc. ad infinitum):
    War is Peace
    Freedom is Slavery
    Ignorance is Strength
  2. after 14/09/2014 will print Down with Big Brother! every 10 seconds.
  3. at first glance looks like it does only 1. so that you will not be caught by the Party.
There are a fair number of good responses, but this is so far the best one since it doesn't include a boatload of background information that needs to exist in the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four for the code to work, even though it doesn't necessarily exist within it.