The Personal Computer Revolution Behind the Iron Curtain

szczys writes Obviously the personal computer revolution was world-wide, but the Eastern Bloc countries had a story of PC evolution all their own. Martin Malý tells first hand of his experiences seeing black market imports, locally built clones of popular western machines, and all kinds of home-built equipment. From the article: "The biggest problem was a lack of modern technologies. There were a lot of skilled and clever people in eastern countries, but they had a lot of problems with the elementary technical things. Manufacturing of electronics parts was divided into diverse countries of Comecon – The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. In reality, it led to an absurd situation: You could buy the eastern copy of Z80 (made in Eastern Germany as U880D), but you couldn’t buy 74LS00 at the same time. Yes, a lot of manufacturers made it, but 'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.' So 'make a computer' meant 50 percent of electronics skills and 50 percent of unofficial social network and knowledge like 'I know a guy who knows a guy and his neighbor works in a factory, where they maybe have a material for PCBs' at those times."

Comments

I really don't fucking care

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want another Bennett Haselton contribution

We're so far from that now!

[psyko_chewbacca]

And now everyone can easily source parts that are not supposed to be publicly available for almost nothing. Thanks Alibaba, IC2IC and such! Xbox 360 custom ATI GPU, sure! PS3 Cell CPU, easy. I assume that if those are so easy to find, digging a little further could probably score you something you could get into trouble for just having in your hands!

Re:We're so far from that now!

[pegr]

And sometimes the chips are even genuine!

Re:We're so far from that now!

[jonwil]

Too bad the same magic that throws up things like that cant throw up a few hundred of the obsolete Knowles speaker the Neo900 project has been trying to source (or the other hard-to-get components that project has a need for)

Re:We're so far from that now!

[TWX]

When a truck can have a pallet of those Knowles speakers fall off the back of it, then you'll be able to find them.

Re:We're so far from that now!

[Opportunist]

Care to explain why they are "not supposed to be publicly available"?

Re:We're so far from that now!

[dbIII]

We're locked out by various exclusivity deals and can only catch the crumbs when repairers sell some of their stock.
Example: Last year (or maybe 2012) I got an unused N900 by jumping through various hoops with the remains of Nokia but the Neo900 project can't just buy the remaining stock of unused phones and parts due to various bullshit that's the nature of the industry and not just Nokia. Making an offer is ignored, you've got to have a "valid" reason even if the hardware is otherwise jsut waiting to become landfill.

Re:We're so far from that now!

[mikael]

Back in those days, start of the art technology in CPU's were "restricted exports". The USA wanted to show that Communism didn't lead to as many advancements in technology as Capitalism, so they restricted exports on technology such as chip design software, CPU's and other chip logic (remember the A-team trying to block smugglers exporting flip-flop chips? It was that serious). This led to the Eastern European countries doing various work-arounds. They could get gray imports through third-party countries that weren't part of the Western trade block, and weren't part of the USSR either. Or they could set up fake companies in the host country that would export the technology.

Another strategy was to make their own logic chips. However, yields for complex logic such as CPU's, wasn't that good, so they ended up with CPU's with missing instructions. But that wasn't a problem, mathematician/software engineers figured out ways of emulating broken instructions using other instructions. If JMP was broken, then use CLR; BCC. Arithmetic operations like ADD could be replaced by NEG and SUB, and so on... So they ended up with an abstraction layer using assembler macros that provided a set of functioning instructions.

Re:We're so far from that now!

[Opportunist]

What's that got to do with XBox 360 GPUs?

Re:We're so far from that now!

[Opportunist]

True, true. With ADHD it's easy to get sidetracked when you ... oh, look, a dog with a puffy tail!

'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[Nutria]

And academic leftists wonder why Communism collapsed...

"But we can do it the Right Way!!!" Yeah, sure, bud, because (modern) Liberal Arts professors have soooo much experience outside the Ivory Tower...

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Academic leftists, unlike you, know that it was socialism that collapsed. Communism couldn't have collapsed because nobody got that far yet.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[operagost]

I understand that Pajitnov actually created Tetris in 1977, but it took seven "next years" to get the parts. To pass the time, he cut pieces out of paper and slid them along the ground while humming the theme. DOO DO DO DOOO DO DO DOO DO DO DOO

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[TWX]

Most academic leftists I know understand that true Communism can't function because of the human desire to rise above one's peers. True leaderless Communism would have to shoot for the lowest-common-denominator and be more like the Borg Collective as it was originally portrayed in Star Trek: The Next Generation, as it could not tolerate anyone think that they are better than anyone else or trying to be better than anyone else.

Most leftist academics believe that the argument of what should be government-provided versus what should be laissez-faire is the crux, and it's finding a balance. Anyone so leftist as to seek true communism is as unrealistic as anyone thinking that complete capitalism without government moderation of the market would work. Both are fantasies. Both get subsumed into oligarchies or dictatorships in some fashion or another without counter-forces to keep them in check.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[K. S. Kyosuke]

So by your logic, communism could work in Scandinavia? ;-)

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

It wasn't Communism or Socialism that collapsed, it was Sovietism.

Communism as a means of where workers own the firm and means of production hasn't failed. Look at manufacturing and worker coops. Some succeed, some fail. I'm guessing around the same rate that private and publicly owned firms do. Given that though, I'm willing to say that the idea isn't a failure.

John Green said it best. "Truth resists simplicity."

If you have a system where worker owned firms are exchanging goods and services on an open market using currency and capital as means of trade, is that a communist or capitalist society? What about when state governments establish rules that govern trade?

I'm a descriptivist when it comes to language. However, when the use of language is twisted as a way to paint people and ideas as "other" I have a massive problem with it. Don't get me wrong. I do understand that when we talk about "Capitalism" we're talking about western style capitalism where production and markets are more or less handled privately(Government regulations not withstanding). Conversely and by "Communism" we're talking about Soviet style communism where the state controls the means and focus of production. It's been a few years since I've read Marx and Engels, but I don't think this was the point of the mid 19th century communist movement.

So it becomes important to remember when we talk about things like Communism and Capitalism, things are pretty complex when you start to get serious into the terminology.

Did communism fail? Probably not. Has capitalism failed? Probably not either. It's likely that these are mutually exclusive ideas that can coexist.

Furthermore, how a state governs itself and interacts with it's markets complicate things further.

One thing i'm willing to bet on being pretty simple is that state planned production systems probably won't work. Not unless you got really lucky and the Government wasn't corrupt and somehow manages to provide for everyone.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[PolygamousRanchKid]

And academic leftists wonder why Communism collapsed...

The former East Germany (DDR), was proof that the Communist system sucks.

If you take a nation full of Germans, and manage to make a poor country out of it . . . the system sucks!

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[TWX]

No, but I actually agree with points 1, 6, and 9. Once kids have enough self-esteem to self-motivate, I think it's a disservice to continue to tell them that they're special. Half the time they aren't even unique in any truly meaningful metric, and once kids are out of school and have reached the age of majority then no one is required to care about what happens to them anymore. Giving kids deserved recognition for their achievements is one thing, but recognition needs to be proportional to the achievement and recognition without achievement (ie, participation 'awards') doesn't seem to help.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[TWX]

Worker-owned companies, often Employee Stock-Option Programs or ESOPs are still a form of captialism, but with the ownership of capital more specially distributed than normal. It's more like a partnership where everyone working there is a partner to a certain degree. The company is owned by the partners, the workers or former workers in this case, and they benefit directly from the company's success.

If I understand the principal intent of Communism, the individual is to be provided for without question, and the individual is supposed to work to the best of their abilities without question. The problem with this is that lots of people won't work if they're provided for without having to do so, and if the system attempts to impose metrics on individuals to compel them to work, they'll look for ways to skirt the rules. In manufacturing that means poor quality goods as various stages do the minimum needed to pass, which compounds as the products go through multiple stages of production.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[MarkvW]

Hitler took a nation of Germans and made a poor country out of it.

Only US provided welfare brought it back!!

Welfare is great!

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The principle intent of communism was to end the oppression of the working class by those who had capital and wealth. Not so lazy people could leech off the system. I don't think that I've read anything like that in some of the original communist works.

I think the problem with Soviet style communism was that central planning bureaucracies were trying to balance authoritarian political power and economic production.

It's a pretty Brady Bunch view of the world, but had the Soviet Union not been a paranoid authoritarian bureaucracy, we might have a different view of what "communism" means.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[operagost]

Look at manufacturing and worker coops. Some succeed, some fail.

Yes. Because they are voluntary. When the government forces communism on you, it is not.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[operagost]

The experiment is still going on in North Korea and Cuba. I think what we saw in the Soviet Union is actually the middle road. North Korea shows us what can happen in the worst case scenario, which Cuba shows us the best scenario... which is still not great.

We'll know that communism has succeeded when we find a communist country that doesn't prevent its citizens from leaving.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[tepples]

and once kids are out of school and have reached the age of majority then no one is required to care about what happens to them anymore.

Then what should society do with adults whose disabilities interfere with working or with finding a job?

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[tepples]

In other words, the emperor penguins at the South Pole and the elves at the North Pole are successful communists. So how can we emulate them?

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[Opportunist]

Communism will work. As soon as man prefers working to earning money.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[Opportunist]

Well, we already got the paranoid, authoritarian bureaucracy over here, too. And the economy isn't doing too well either.

Fuck, the commies won.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[Opportunist]

The joke was something like

Question to great radio Jeriwan: We hear that the victory of communism is already at the horizon. What is a horizon?
Answer from great radio Jeriwan: The horizon is an imaginary line where the ground meets the sky, and no matter how fast you try to run towards it, you will never reach it.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[TWX]

Another problem is that true Communism isn't supposed to have leaders. There isn't supposed to be a Politburo. It's almost more like Anarchy but where everyone is taken care of than anything else, but leaders are not willing to give up their power to transition to that phase, and end up as dictators or oligarchs. It's simply a change in who is benefiting fro the toil of the workers, they still get the shaft.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[TWX]

Someone is required to care about those people only because the State has decided that someone has to care about those people.

Same with kids in schools; the staff care about the kids because they're being paid to care about those kids. If they weren't being paid, there'd be a lot less paying attention to those kids' interests.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[TWX]

That won't happen until one's future is guaranteed to be secure.

And that won't ever happen.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[Nutria]

but leaders are not willing to give up their power to transition to that phase,

Orwell wrote a book about that...

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[Nutria]

Not so lazy people could leech off the system.

Thus the fundamental failure of Marx: ignoring the reality of human nature.

had the Soviet Union not been a paranoid authoritarian bureaucracy

That many people -- in the Russian Empire, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, China, Korea, etc, etc, -- can't just accidentally be paranoid and authoritarian.

Good socio-political theories must take people's baser instincts into account. That's the genius of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand: it presumes that people will be selfish and greedy.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[tepples]

Someone is required to care about those people only because the State has decided that someone has to care about those people.

Do you disagree with the State's decision that someone has to care about those people? If so, what would you do with them instead? And how would you cope if you were one?

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[wierd_w]

Clearly you have not actually READ the manifesto,or much of Marx's rhetoric. Marx does indeed rail against freeloading, and outright says that any system that permits it cannot be sustained, as the number of freeloaders will rapidly outpace the number of producers, bankrupting the system. (in general in his rhetoric)

In fact, he sets the univeral requirement of *ALL* to labor, as bulleted item #8 in his manifesto.

These measures will of course be different in different countries.

Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c.

(Found in chapter 2 of the manifesto, in case you wondered)

Marx is not strictly against the providence of support for those that are physically unable to labor anymore, he just stresses the insistence that these cases need to be strictly evaluated, and limited in number, otherwise they will overtake production, and the system will collapse. For those that are able to lablor-- even just a little-- Marx asserts that it is their duty to perform such labor. This means that the paraplegic in the wheelchair goes to work doing something with his hands that does not require the use of his legs, and in return, gets the fruits of the redistribution of wealth, same as a person who has legs-- etc. Marxist rhetoric is very much against "Full disability" type welfare, except where it quite literally is true that the person cannot work at all.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Third position is absolutely a fine thing to bring up but it's like trying to insist loudly we talk about RC Cola when the context is the cola wars of the 80s.

Sure, there's a lot of alternatives to the dichotomy of capitalist vs communist, but that dichotomy was rhe backdrop to the context here.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The Breitbart and Fox News offices haven't been busted and rounded up for treason.

My point was that if the whites had won instead of the Reds, what would the opinion of communism be?

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[Nutria]

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

Xenophobia much?

7. ... the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands

Lack of agricultural knowledge. There's a reason it's a waste-land.

8. Equal liability of all to labour.

But... compassion!!!

Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

Inherent disincentive to efficiency, and why the Soviet Union -- with those huge Ukrainian wheat fields -- had to import *lots* of US wheat.

9. Combination of agriculture ... more equable distribution of the population over the country.

What utter stupidity. There are damned practical reasons that cities grow up where they do, and positing crap like "more equable distribution of the population" denies those realities.

Capitalism and the free market sure aren't perfect, but they are the reason that the First World is so prosperous and China and India dumped communism.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[wierd_w]

You seem to have mis-identified my political affiliation. I am not a marxist communist. I have simply read the manifesto, and marx's rhetoric. I was pointing out that the AC above had clearly not done so, having created such a strawman to beat.

Genuine criticisms, such as "You cant cultivate marginal lands as if they were fully arable! It's madness!" are fully fair game, and I apply them with gusto. However, asserting blandly that Marx had not contemplated human nature? That's clearly not supported by his rhetoric, but is rather a consequence of ingesting pre-chewed propaganda pieces.

I value correct, well based arguments. that's why I bothered to read Marx's rhetoric in the first place. It is a necessity to develop and use proper analytic skills.

Does Marxism work? Fuck no.
Did Marx think about the freeloader problem? Definitely.

That latter part is all I was trying to point out. It never ceases to amaze me how such a correction makes people instantly apply "You must be a marxist!" as a reactionary measure.

Please avoid doing so in the future. Thank you.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[dunkelfalke]

Lack of agricultural knowledge. There's a reason it's a waste-land.

Yes, and agricultural mismanagement is one of the reasons. Desert reforestation is important.

What utter stupidity. There are damned practical reasons that cities grow up where they do, and positing crap like "more equable distribution of the population" denies those realities.

You forget one important thing - perhaps you live in a country that was settled not too long ago - there were practical reasons that cities grew up where they did many centuries ago. These reasons might not be valid nowadays. In fact, that more equable distribution of the population over the country is what has happened in Germany during the late 20th century.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[hackertourist]

Uh, no. West Germany largely recovered on its own. They didn't have access to Marshall Plan funds until after their economic recovery had started. In fact the US and its allies started the postwar period by removing lots of valuables (coal and steel industry, patents, scientists) from Germany.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[znrt]

you're in a loop. teachers get paid because someone cares.

socialism isn't about reducing everything to the lowest common denominator, but about raising common denominator as much as possible. same as capitalism, actually, which hopes that wealth and wellbeing will automatically multiply with individual ambition, whereas socialism intends to rationally drive the process. and you're right, pure communism and pure capitalism fail for the very same reasons: individualism and greed. however, one difference is that while socialism tries to educate against it, capitalism tends to glorify it. viable solutions are somewhat inbetween and, gues what, scandinavian socialism has proven itself to be way ahead of any other system on several metrics so far. they are capitalists with real social education.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[znrt]

That's the genius of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand: it presumes that people will be selfish and greedy.

haven't read mr smith, actually, but his invisible hand is screwing up the planet pretty impressively. if he was genius, i'm guessing he wasn't that confident about the invisible hand as his disciples have been trumpeting around.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[DigiShaman]

You can eat better than the ultra wealthy did 100 years ago. From fruits, vegetables, fattened up chickens, etc. Not just what you can buy, but how product has physically changed from industrialization. Also modern medicine and the resulting technology has had a profound impact on civilization.

Screwing up the planet you said? Look pal, Mother Nature is a BITCH! She doesn't care about you. Your job, out of pure circumstance, is to eat, sleep, fuck, and die. Congrats if you have children out of it to continue the chain of reverse entropy that is known as life.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[znrt]

deregulating life insurance so that anyone can buy/sell it for anyone else anonymously

that actually sounds like a pretty simple and good idea.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[TWX]

No given individual is required to care to the point of taking responsibility.

As a group, we agree, that 'we' care, but rather than impose that someone take responsibility, we entice someone to take responsibility through salary. We pay them to care.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[Opportunist]

Well, that depends on what you consider a guaranteed secure future. Having everything you ever want forever? Nope. Mostly because we do not have unlimited resources (yet, let's wait for energy-matter conversion). Basically that's why we're in the current economic crisis, because we noticed that it's impossible for us to maintain a luxury living standard for everyone, so to secure the luxury living standard of the upper crust the plebs have to be pushed back down.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[znrt]

true, but all that doesn't come from thin air. specifically industralization has a high cost on the environment that we privileged don't pay. part of the magic is that we are shoving much of those costs on poor countries (which incidentally constitute the majority of the population and who do not eat better than ultra wealthy did 100 years ago).

so i guess i might do have some concerns besides eating, sleeping, fucking and dying.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[DigiShaman]

The poverty of a nation is directly proportional to the freedom and type of government they have. They need to rise up and have a revolution. I refuse to curtail my lifestyle so the poor can be impacted less thereby keeping their ruling class government elite fat and happy. Your global concerns is prolonging the problem of oppression and tyranny around the world. Fancy that.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[Mike Van Pelt]

We'll know that communism has succeeded when we find a communist country that doesn't prevent its citizens from leaving.

This. Oh, so very much this.

Re:'it is out of stock now; try to ask next year.'

[znrt]

you realize that you live in a plutocracy, right? your regime is just softer, more photogenic, but not fundamentally different from those tyrannies. so are you, your precious lifestile is just a different manifestation of poverty: with all your gadgets (or maybe just because of them) you are powerless. you need to rise up and have a revolution. fancy that. :P

Russia recently upgraded

[Lucas123]

Our desktop systems now have TWO DISK DRIVES!!!

.

Take that capitalist scum!

Re:Russia recently upgraded

[unixisc]

Russia now has REACTOS, which is the best FOSS alternative to Windows

Re:Wait, how is this possible?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

They didn't actually. For example, Soyuz-U still has analog control computers. So you didn't get advanced computers as spin-offs of the space program, because the space program didn't have advanced computers in the first place.

Re:Wait, how is this possible?

[istartedi]

Command economies like the USSR, Cuba, and DPRK work poorly in general; but they can concentrate their efforts to excel in specific areas. Thus, the USSR could beat the US in the early days of the space race; but couldn't supply consumer goods very well. Cuba also still operates much like the USSR, with similar problems in daily living. OTOH, they produce a lot of doctors and send them all over the world. Their command economy actually focuses on this. It almost makes you want to like their government. Almost. It isn't hard to see through all that, and if they simply taxed a more efficient market economy they could probably send even more doctors. DPRK? I'm not sure if they excel in anything. Even their feared nuke program is kind of a joke. AFAIK it's just a really sucky command economy; but it wouldn't surprise me if they produced a hand-full of really fantastic pocket watches every year. When you control the output of an entire nation, you can easily direct it disproportionately in one area at the expense of many other things.

Re:Wait, how is this possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't work because they're susceptible to corruption. The "commanders" in the command economy quickly find out they can use their position of power to enrich themselves. And do. Every time.

Unchecked capitalism has the same problem, as we're currently experiencing here in the US. The capitalists can use their positions of power to enrich themselves. And do. Every time.

Wealth redistribution mechanisms used to keep a lid on these things but the capitalists have found that they simply need to engineer public opinion and convince the public that taxing the rich is "unfair" and "evil". Far-right conservative media exists not to entertain or inform, but to convince the general public to work against their own self-interest. In the past two decades wealth concentration has mirrored the rise of far-right media.

At this rate we'll collapse, just like the USSR. Weep for your grandchildren.

Maybe was better in the long run

[gatkinso]

Better skills and all that.

Lots of QWERTY... no cyrillic?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Maybe I'm wrong here, but were there any machines then that had non-western keyboards and layouts?

Just weird seeing QWERTY keyboards on Soviet machines is well.. weird. I was expecting something else. Or is this just the nature of cloning?

Re:Lots of QWERTY... no cyrillic?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're just wrong here. The article is about computers built in Czechoslovakia, where Czech and Slovak languages are spoken. Both of those languages use Latin letters, not Cyrillic. It makes sense that the keyboards aren't Cyrillic.

Also, at least one of the pictures shows a QWERTZ.

Re:Lots of QWERTY... no cyrillic?

[AmiMoJo]

There were many Russian computers with Cyrillic keyboards, but TFA seems to be focusing on the few that were more direct copies of western versions and so presumably used QWERTY to maintain compatibility with pirate ROMs. However, most of the successful machines improved on the western designs and either modified or completely re-wrote the ROM code to support Cyrillic.

Re:Lots of QWERTY... no cyrillic?

[mekkab]

thus the invention/"work around" of Translit and Volapuk encoding.

Re:Wait, how is this possible?

[Irate Engineer]

Sometimes leaving stuff that works alone is fine. Actually that's a good general engineering practice.

Most engineering failures occur when "outdated" technology gets replaced with new shiny (because, new shiny!), and the new shiny bites you in the ass with the unexpected.

Not to say that things shouldn't be updated if the technology improves, but if you just need a relatively robust low tech computer technology, sticking with what works isn't such a bad thing.

Re:Wait, how is this possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is quite amusing to note that America got to the Moon by a command, and Russia beat America into space in the first place by using various competing design bureaus.

Tetris clone irony

[tepples]

Mr. Pajitnov prototyped Tetris on an Electronica 60, a Soviet clone of a PDP-11. Yet he goes RIAA on anyone who clones his own work.

Re:Tetris clone irony

[dbIII]

So? He didn't clone the PDP-11 himself did he?

Re:Tetris clone irony

[tepples]

Let me try to make the parallelism more obvious: Mr. Pajitnov used a clone to make his game. Yet he doesn't want gamers to use a clone.

C64

[sourcerror]

There were a lot of "enterprise" software written for the C64 in the late 80ies in the communist block because it didn't fell under the import ban.

It also supported a lot of peripherals, like floppy disk, hard drive and mouse. It also had a lot of documentation in German, which was easier to learn in the Eastern block.

Re:Wait, how is this possible?

[Lehk228]

new shiny bites you in the ass with the unexpected.

BS, we have new shiny at work, the biting in the ass was entirely expected, as was the catastrophic loss in functionality and performance. It's all about some stupid fuck justifying his salary to his superiors

Re:Wait, how is this possible?

[Irate Engineer]

God, I'm sorry. I hope you get a new shiny stupid fuck soon.

Different not ancestor

[dbIII]

For some situations that's probabaly a very good fit. With some signal processing stuff we're really simulating what an analog computer could do via a digital system. If there's no need to frequently reprogram the lack of flexibility doesn't matter so much.
With analog you get the solution within the limits of noise and not the solution digitized into a certain number of bits. They were good for some things, the last I saw was in 1992 being used to refine a fluid flow model in real time to match the experimental rig right next to it.

Re:Different not ancestor

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Well, in the case of Soyuz, one of the consequences was that the launch guidance basically lacked azimuth control. Because of the system they used, the whole launch pad had to rotate into the required position. Only the new digital control system on the new Soyuz-2 can get away with that. Try to imagine a rotating Saturn V pad or a rotating Space Shuttle pad. One would think that a better control computer is ultimately easier to do - and smaller, and cheaper - , but that's what they've been using for fifty years (presumably because it wasn't cheaper for them).

Re:Different not ancestor

[dbIII]

That is interesting.

Re:Wait, how is this possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

you leave out the part where the Jupiter C rocket the army had available was so advanced because it was the next generation of the Nazi rocket program. The US had Von Braun due to Operation Paperclip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-range_ballistic_missile
http://www.businessinsider.com/nazi-scientists-space-program-2014-2

Re:Wait, how is this possible? - Ground Units

[BBF_BBF]

They didn't actually. For example, Soyuz-U still has analog control computers. So you didn't get advanced computers as spin-offs of the space program, because the space program didn't have advanced computers in the first place.

Just because the computers ON spacecraft were primitive (because they were made to be failure proof in extreme conditions) doesn't mean that advanced computers ON THE GROUND weren't developed to design and test the space craft and its components.

You've clearly demonstrated thinking so focused on proving your point that you missed the obvious.

Re:Wait, how is this possible?

[phantomfive]

DPRK? I'm not sure if they excel in anything. Even their feared nuke program is kind of a joke.

The North Korean military is intimidating, especially if you live in South Korea.

Also, they seem to be the world's leading experts on dictator kitsch style monuments, and build them around the world.

Would you be the first?

[tepples]

If you discovered you had such a disability, would you step up to be euthanized?

No irony - rusty argument that falls apart

[dbIII]

Choices of other people do not make you a hypocrite. As I wrote above, he didn't clone the PDP-11 himself did he? His tetris is a thing he did himself. I'm not expected to answer to the shortcomings of whoever made the keyboard I'm typing on am I?
If I am then that can of worms is huge and hits a Godwin as soon as IBM is in the mix.

Re:No irony - rusty argument that falls apart

[tepples]

If cloning the computer were as illegal and as vigorously prosecuted as cloning the game is now, he couldn't have made "a thing he did himself" in the first place. And yes, Tetris licensees do pursue users of clones through YouTube takedown actions against videos of clones. How would Mr. Pajitnov feel if Digital had similarly slapped him down for having used a clone of its product?

Re:No irony - rusty argument that falls apart

[dbIII]

There's so many things wrong with your attack on him, and I'll ask three questions to highlight it.
Should I be responsible for what IBM did in the 1940s if I use an IBM product?
If not, why is Pajitnov in some way responsible for cloning the PDP-11 just by using a knockoff?
Should Pajitnov be personally responsible for what the lawyers of the people he sold his rights to are doing?

Getting the idea of how utterly ridiculous your moralising is yet? Or was that the entire idea and you are playing some idiotic character to bait people?

Re:No irony - rusty argument that falls apart

[tepples]

Should I be responsible for what IBM did in the 1940s if I use an IBM product?

No.

Should Pajitnov be personally responsible for what the lawyers of the people he sold his rights to are doing?

Last time I checked, the Tetris keiretsu (Tetris Holding, The Tetris Company, and Blue Planet Software) was managed by Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers. So yes.

Re:No irony - rusty argument that falls apart

[dbIII]

You did not manage to tie the two dependant items together and show that Pajitnov is in some way responsible for a copyright violation against DEC or their heirs.

Moral != legal

[tepples]

My intent was not to make a rigorous argument from current law but to make a statement about the morality of cloning. Law rarely perfectly matches morality. Pajitnov's actions through The Tetris Company combined with his previous statements, such as that free software "destroys the market" and "should never have existed", imply that he believes that cloning is immoral. But by that standard, he used the product of immorality to make his flagship product.

Not even immoral

[dbIII]

Once again - the disconnection is that he didn't do the clone but just used a product that happened to be a clone. Are you responsible for the morality of Microsoft every time you use one of their products - are you ripping off Spyglass each time you use internet explorer because they were supposed to get royalties for what MS gave away as a free product? Similarly Pajitnov using a clone is not responsible for the morality of the people who cloned it.
I know being otherwise simplifies things and lets you find something to be critical of just about anyone, whether there are grounds or not. However remember looking at the world in such a way is dangerous, for if your focus falls on yourself you are similarly responsible in that view for things well beyond your control - it is not good for mental health. Of course you could apply exceptionalism where in some way you are exempt from the morality you apply to the rest of the world, it seems to be fashionable these days especially in politics.