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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."
I just want another Bennett Haselton contribution
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!
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Take that capitalist scum!
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
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
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.
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Hitler took a nation of Germans and made a poor country out of it.
Only US provided welfare brought it back!!
Welfare is great!
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.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Better skills and all that.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
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?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
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.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Yes. Because they are voluntary. When the government forces communism on you, it is not.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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.
Well, we already got the paranoid, authoritarian bureaucracy over here, too. And the economy isn't doing too well either.
Fuck, the commies won.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
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.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
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
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.
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.
Yes, and agricultural mismanagement is one of the reasons. Desert reforestation is important.
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.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
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.
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.
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).
Ezekiel 23:20