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1980's Soviet Bloc Computing: Printers, Mice, and Cassette Decks

Posted by samzenpus on from the making-it-work dept.

szczys writes Martin Maly rode the wave of computer evolution in the 1980's while living in the former Czechoslovak Republic. Computers themselves were hard to come by, peripherals were even more rare and so enthusiasts of the time hacked their own, like dot-matrix printers and computer mice. If your build was impressive enough, the government would adopt it and begin manufacturing the design somewhat widely. Was your first computer mouse built into a plastic spice container? We covered what the personal computer revolution was like in Eastern Bloc countries back in December.

74 comments

  1. C64 had a cassette drive by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My C64 had a cassette recorder (DataSette I think it was called). It wasn't being Soviet, it was being cheap when the floppy disk drive more expensive than the computer.

    1. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The IBM PC had a cassette interface. There was a connector for it right next to the keyboard connector on the motherboard. If you booted up the PC and it didn't find a bootable floppy disk, or even a floppy disk controller on really stripped down machines, it would boot into ROM basic which had cassette i/o. They pulled the interface connector on PC-XT and later models but the ROM basic remained.

    2. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by itzly · · Score: 2

      Most home computers from that era had cassette recorders.

    3. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Early 5.25" floppy disks could only store around 180K of data. An extended play tape cassette could store 3 hours of audio per side, with the data transfer rate at 600 baud (around 60 bytes/second). So a tape cassette could store a maximum of 632K of data per side. In practice, it was less than that because you had to find space to store each program on the tape cassette, and handle your own "sector management" by allocating a good segment of space for each program. Your only clue was the little counter in the tape drive. God help you if you accidentally reset that counter - had to wind the tape all the way back and start again. There were some chess playing video game consoles that actually were able to use tape cassettes to record video or the individual moves.

      Fortunately by the 1990's, we than had 3.25" floppies which could store 1.44 Megabytes of data per disk, then zip drives, and now 64+ Gigabyte USB memory sticks and SSD drives.

    4. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My C64 had a cassette recorder (DataSette I think it was called). It wasn't being Soviet, it was being cheap when the floppy disk drive more expensive than the computer.

      That period (early 80's), my Amstrad CPC 6128 had a disk drive but most of my friends in the Greek town i was growing up had either the CPC 464 model with the cassette or the Commodore's 64 like you, the ZX81/Spectrum, and others - i remember how expensive the (special) 3 inch disks was, so expensive that i had to buy a cassette drive!

    5. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Tx · · Score: 2

      Ahh, yes, the early days of software piracy (or my experience of it) - copying Sinclair Spectrum games onto C90 cassettes using twin cassette decks. If you tried, you could fit like ten games on one cassette. Those were the days.

      --
      Oh no... it's the future.
    6. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 1

      I had a disk drive, and it took me a long time to understand the message,"Press play on tape." Basically that was the blue screen of death for a C64. Restart the machine and try something different.

      --
      God spoke to me
    7. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      I usually made 3 copies of programs and data because the cassette was so unreliable. At least my cheap gittup was. You can only buy so much on weekend-lawn-mower wages.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    8. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by itzly · · Score: 1

      Of course, as soon as you started with tapes from others, you entered the eternal process of turning the alignment screw on the recorder head.

    9. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You never had a 3.25" floppy. You mean 3.5".

    10. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Phreakiture · · Score: 1

      Actually, that was the point where you should hit Shift+Run/Stop, which would abort the tape load you might have inadvertently started.

      Second thing to try was Run/Stop+Restore (and you had to hit Restore hard because it was designed to prevent accidental closure), to warm-reset the machine.

      Then you restart.

      . . . Unless, that is, you had one of the defective machines (there were, admittedly, a hell of a lot of them -- I went through 6 before I found one that worked worth a damn), the first step above should have gotten you out of that.

      --
      www.wavefront-av.com
    11. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by operagost · · Score: 1

      I'm a bit surprised that anyone could use a VIC or 64 for very long without realizing that you could do Shift+Stop to break out of that. I mean, even if you didn't RTFM (which was excellent for the VIC) you knew to do that to break out of a running BASIC program-- so why not try it elsewhere?

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    12. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by buckfeta2014 · · Score: 1

      Not to mention most microcomputers from the 80s only had 64kb of addressable memory, and a good chunk of it was dedicated to ROM space.

      --
      Buck Feta. You know what to do.
    13. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by slew · · Score: 1

      You never had a 3.25" floppy. You mean 3.5".

      Perhaps you are talking about an ANSI X3.171-1989 90mm drive? ;^)

      Which some people in the UK occasionally called a 3.5" "stiffy" to distinguish it from its larger/floppier predecessor like the 8" floppy and the 5.25" mini-floppy...

      FWIW, although I never personally had a 3.25" drive, one of my buddies did purchase the Amdisk 3" compact floppy disc system for his Apple ][+....

    14. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by GoodNewsJimDotCom · · Score: 2

      I started using a Commodore 64 when I was 7. All of our family was amazed when we realized how to do 'Load"*",8,1' and Load"*",8,1
      So many good times were had with the C64 simply because the jump in technology from what we had before it was so huge. We got our C64 a little over half a year before the NES. Its hard to imagine so much technology jump in one year. If you look at video games today, not much changes(more polys) each console generation anymore since we already had enough computing power to do what we wanted last generation. But going from Atari2600 games to C64/NES games was such a jump that it is hard to put into words, and maybe no one will understand it unless they lived through it. It inspired some sort of awe that I couldn't put into words.

      --
      God spoke to me
    15. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 1

      Early 5.25" floppy disks could only store around 180K of data

      The single-sided, single-density 5.25" floppies I used with my TRS-80 Model 1 stored 72K of data.

      http://classiccmp.org/dunfield...

    16. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      I started using a Commodore 64 when I was 7. All of our family was amazed when we realized how to do 'Load"*",8,1' and Load"*",8,1

      That always mystified me - what magic incantations did they do so that that command would actually load it off disk AND auto start the program. (I never did find out, so I don't know today).

      Or how that even worked...

    17. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      I owned a Sinclair Spectrum and used to copy tapes using a dual deck and I never, once, had to adjust anything.

      One of us was doing it wrong, or one of us is making shit up.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    18. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I meant the 3.5" inch drives. When they first came, the disk boxes were solid white plastic. Dixons and Parrot were the best, especially with the rainbow disk cover sets.

      http://ny-image2.etsy.com/il_fullxfull.139244062.jpg

    19. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I remember those days. Seeing the jump from the Atari 2600 to Atari 400/800 (then with those funky true-color modes made from changing the color palette in sync with the pixel clock and horizontal blank interrupts). The screen resolutions ranges from 80x40 pixels to 320x200 using display artifacts from the CRT as a means of getting color screens.

      PC's at the time rapidly moved from CGA (4 colors), then EGA (16 colors), VGA (320x200 with 256 colors). Those early demos showing quantized photographs of castles, astronauts and ancient Egyptian artifacts were impressive. Then there were the 800x600+ SVGA modes with pixblitting acceleration. With the early accelerated graphics boards (Hercules Graphics Station Card) back in the late 1980's, that introduced 16-bit and 24-bit graphics modes were the first time I saw true-color images on a PC. Games were still using the PC speaker at that time, and if you were lucky, played Midi sound tracks through an Adlib Sound Blaster. Now PC's have triple screens and 3D stereoscopic modes.

    20. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if you were lucky, played Midi sound tracks through an Adlib Sound Blaster.

      I hope you meant "AdLib or Sound Blaster" because there's no such thing as an "AdLib Sound Blaster". Those two cards were made by two different companies. AdLib was from Québec, Creative Labs was from Singapore.

    21. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The TRS-80 Level 1 only had 64k ram. I remember having to trim code to get it to fit and run.

    22. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because 64kb was enough.

    23. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4344234/how-to-autostart-a-program-from-floppy-disk-on-a-commodore-c64

    24. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by dbIII · · Score: 1

      No, I can confirm that alignment was an issue - not a show stopper but sometimes stuff had to be adjusted. It also used to happen on tape drives designed for computers and for high end audio as well.

    25. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As did many computers of that era. Mine sure did (microbee 32k).

    26. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 1

      The TRS-80 Level 1 only had 64k ram. I remember having to trim code to get it to fit and run.

      Believe it or not, the Model I "Level 1" had 4K of RAM. The Level II brought it up to 16K. If you added an "Expansion Interface" (also knows as the "Expensive Interface") you could increase the RAM to it's maximum: 48K.

      So the Model I never got up to a whopping 64K...

    27. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by hackertourist · · Score: 1

      An extended play tape cassette could store 3 hours of audio per side

      I'm sorry, a what now?

      The Compact Cassette standard had one tape speed (4.76 cm/s). Readily available cassettes came with 60-minute or 90-minute runtimes (total). You could get C-120 cassettes with 1 hour per side, but those used extra-thin tape that jammed easily. The longest tapes ever made were C-180, for 90 minutes per side, these used even thinner tape and so unreliable they never sold widely.
      I've never seen one, and I was a bit of an audiophile in those days.
      You'd have to combine a C-180 tape with a non-standard playing speed (used only in dication machines) to get 3 hours per side.

    28. Re:C64 had a cassette drive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you, Mr. Technical. This conversation was totally unreadable until you clarified that detail.

  2. Admirable aspects by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Modernism and human efficiency aside, they repaired and reused a lot of equipment and parts rather than make version N be landfill and buy version N + 1. You have to admire that aspect. The throw-away culture we have now is an embarrassment to humanity. Plus, there's the fun side of their MacGyver-ism.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re:Admirable aspects by HBI · · Score: 0

      I'm sure the potential knock on the door in the middle of the night had something to do with the MacGyver attitude. That said, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    2. Re:Admirable aspects by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      I'm sure the potential knock on the door in the middle of the night had something to do with the MacGyver attitude.

      I'm not sure what you mean. If you quietly fix stuff without complaining to get your work done (i.e., carry out your orders), you shouldn't have any problems with authorities over such.

      the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

      And I didn't mean to say life was overall better there. I was just pointing out it had some up-sides to it. Every culture and country has something to admire about it. Life is better when you look for positives in things. And you learn more.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    3. Re:Admirable aspects by mc6809e · · Score: -1

      Those industrious few that were repairing and reusing equipment should have been free to start their own enterprises and invent and produce new things. Instead they had to struggle under communism and miss the opportunity to become the next Steve Jobs of Eastern Europe.

      Of course by holding them back all were kept equally poor (except party insiders) and so the pride and ego of even the most incapable person was spared any uncomfortable comparison.

    4. Re:Admirable aspects by Immerman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Can we please stop repeating the blatantly false claim that Soviets were communist? They may have cynically flown the flag, but in practice they were unapologetically fascist (same small group of elites controls both government and industry). Communism involves the workers owning the means of production - that's only compatible with the government owning the means of production if the workers own the government, and NOBODY is making that claim about Soviet Russia.

      Maybe one day someone will be able to attempt state-level communism, but we're going to have to make some massive advances in democracy first.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    5. Re:Admirable aspects by ezdiy · · Score: 1

      It's true the economic restraints of COMECON bolstered DIY culture all across eastern bloc, a lot of which remains to this day.

      It had it's downsides as well - the hardware at hand was often ancient and the planned state production we relied on for a lot of source components was very inefficient because of communist cadres - basically incompetent bureaucrats created a lot of e-waste by manufacturing useless junk (a lot of which was not salvageable even for DIY) - buggy ASIC clones, poorly done circuit boards, non-existent QA and braindamaged designs, you name it. Think incompetent CEOs of monopolistic megacorp wreaking havoc with nepotism/cronyism/office politics and there being no board to dismiss em. Thats what communist cadres were like, good technical designs and processes were rejected for political reasons way too often.

    6. Re:Admirable aspects by TwoEyedJack · · Score: 1

      Actually, different forms of collectivism have been tried over and over in human history. No centrally-planned command-and-control economy has ever approached the efficiency of free market capitalism. Hayek wrote a book about this called "The Fatal Conceit", where he went through this from the point of view of an economist. He observed that each generation has actors who claim that the prior failures of statism were caused by the corruption of the individuals in power, and that it will be different this time since the new crop of commissars are more virtuous than the last, hence the name of the book. When Obama famously announced that "We are the ones we have been waiting for" he was paying unconscious and ironic homage to Hayek.

    7. Re:Admirable aspects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Try modifying your BluRay player now. You'll get that knock on the door.

    8. Re:Admirable aspects by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure what you mean.

      Me neither. Probably a Rand Paul supporter who forgot to put in something about Agenda 21, the mark of the beast, or gay marriage before hitting [send].

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    9. Re:Admirable aspects by HBI · · Score: 1

      In a country where owning a typewriter was a punishable crime, imagine what concocting your own IT would be like?

      People forget so quickly.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    10. Re:Admirable aspects by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      I thought improvising was expected for technicians there, because supplies were hard to come by. Now, if you are talking about something outside of your area of work, I can see potential problems. The article did say they eventually allowed some degree of hobby projects in order for their students' knowledge to keep pace with the west.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    11. Re:Admirable aspects by dbIII · · Score: 1

      I think the word you are looking for is "totalitarian" instead, where control is seen as far more important than whatever "ism" is in the propaganda that is being printed off.

  3. laugh all you want. by nimbius · · Score: 2

    wayback machine trips to old soviet satellites are always a thrill until you realized what these states were: Speed bumps. Most satellites had to be gobbled up as part of soviet expansionist communisms ethos, but they were actually a substantial economic drain on Moscow. the education was poor, most societies were agrarian, and infrastructure was infantile compared to the motherland. Capitalizing on them meant shoveling nuclear and civil works projects into them, pumping billions rubles into their coffers while doing so. Education was immediately improved, but the focus on mathematics and sciences was dwarfed by the local politburo members to ensure they had enough cobblers, welders, masons, and mechanics to forge what the USSR had ultimately envisioned. Personal computing was a distant third in a lot of ways and by the time the Afghan war had metasticized into a full-blown proxy war with the US, many satellite states were simply human fodder for a meat-grinder campaign that saw heavy casualties on all sides.

    So if youre old enough to remember your first mouse, dont take that for granted. your duly assigned Glorious Leader for the region was under immense pressure to turn it into a socket wrench, or a kalashnikov.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:laugh all you want. by nbauman · · Score: 1

      Sounds like the Vietnam war in the U.S.

    2. Re:laugh all you want. by i.r.id10t · · Score: 1

      Nah, computer periphials don't make a good AK. Well, maybe a Model M keyboard could be used for a receiver flat. But a shovel could do the job pretty good... (with photo evidence)

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
    3. Re:laugh all you want. by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      Eh? Are you talking about the actual satellite states or the union republics?

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    4. Re:laugh all you want. by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure either conflict counts as a "meat grinder". Total USSR losses were under 15,000 troops over a 9 year period. Total US losses in Vietnam were under 59,000 over 19 years (but almost all over a 7 year period). To put this in perspective, WW2 cost the Russians around 9-14 million troops, depending on who you ask. The US lost 400,000. WW1 cost Russia around 2 million troops and the US around 100,000 - and the US was only in that for around 6 months! Hell, even the Korean War managed to kill 36,000 in just 3 years.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    5. Re:laugh all you want. by stasike · · Score: 1

      Czechoslovakia was no speed-bump.
      Standard of living was higher than in Soviet Union.
      It was not an agrarian society and was definitely not a drain of Soviet resources. The drain was in different direction.
      In Czechoslovakia, in 70s and 80s if you had money you could buy lots of interesting stuff, including cars. In Eastern Germany or Soviet Union you had waiting lists for those.
      The infrastructure in Czechoslovakia was superior to what was available in Moscow.

    6. Re:laugh all you want. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Terms like "meat grinder" usually describe battles with high casualty rates as a percentage of those involved, not in absolute terms. So you need to compare combat troops deployed to Vietnam and Afghanistan for your numbers to be meaningful.

    7. Re:laugh all you want. by nbauman · · Score: 1

      It sounds like the Vietnam war because as nimbius describes it, students in the Soviet Union could get a good science and mathematics education, but the purpose of the education system was to provide soldiers for the war.

      Some of our political leaders believed during the cold war that we needed an educated workforce to fight Communism, and our educators encouraged that belief in order to get a lot of money.

      There was some truth to that. After all, we won WWII through industrial production and technology. You could make a better argument that a better educated workforce could increase economic production.

      But I think it was mostly educators coming up with a good excuse to get money. They used the dishonest means of cold war lies towards the good end of technology education.

      If the Soviets were supporting education because they believed they needed it for military advantage, so were we.

    8. Re:laugh all you want. by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      It sounds like the Vietnam war because as nimbius describes it, students in the Soviet Union could get a good science and mathematics education, but the purpose of the education system was to provide soldiers for the war.

      That's great, except that going to college was one way to have a good shot at dodging the draft. Heck, only about 1/4 of US troops were drafted. This just doesn't fit that narrative.

      I don't know enough about how the Soviets manned their force in Afghanistan, but with so few losses it is hard to imagine that they needed troops so desperately. It certainly was not a "meat grinder".

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    9. Re:laugh all you want. by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      Fair enough, but nimbus was using the term to describe why they needed so many conscripts from the Eastern Bloc satellite states. I'm claiming that there simply wasn't that kind of need for men. Same with Vietnam. Losses there were heavier, but there were still many, many men available for the draft. Most of the army was volunteer.

      By whatever standard you want to use, it is hard to lump the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan into the "meat grinder" category. There are more highway deaths in half a year in the US than in the entire conflict.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    10. Re:laugh all you want. by nbauman · · Score: 1

      My point wasn't that it was a meat grinder war.

      My point was that educators on both sides were exploiting the cold war to promote education.

      One of the trump cards that U.S. colleges used to promote science education was, "We have to keep up with the Soviets." It was shameless but it worked. As I recall, I got something called a "National Defense Scholarship" to study science and math.

      I'm sure the Soviet educators were doing the same thing.

      The cold war would have been pretty good if all they did was compete with each other over who could create the best education system in science and math.

      Unfortunately they actually went to war. The military-industrial complex can always outmaneuver the education complex.

    11. Re:laugh all you want. by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      My point wasn't that it was a meat grinder war.

      It was not clear from your initial comment - it sounded like you were agreeing with all of the parent's points and saying that the same situation was true in the US. In fact, nimbius was making exactly the opposite point - he was saying that they were trying to churn out uneducated "working man" soldiers. You are making the point that education was seen as essential to prevailing in the Cold War. I happen to think you are correct and nimbius is wrong. Or at least that nimbius's comments cannot be applied to Vietnam-era America.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    12. Re:laugh all you want. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He meant speed bump in the very literal sense of the word. As in, the next time someone decided to invade the USSR, the purpose of Czechoslovakia (and Poland, Hungary, etc) was to act as a speed bump. Czechoslovakia may have had an industrial economy, but it was not by any means necessary for the USSR, which focused primarily on heavy industry, weapons, and resource extraction. In that context, Czechoslovakia was not really bringing much to the table except... a speed bump. It's not an impeachment of the worth of Czechoslovakia as a country (and possibly quite the opposite), just a matter of historical fact.

    13. Re:laugh all you want. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've almost resigned myself to never see anything but sheer ignorance on the internet in regard to the history of the USSR and Eastern Europe, but your comment was actually very insightful. It's interesting to note that many of these "speed bumps" (both Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact states) ended up significantly wealthier than the USSR, much less the RSFSR, precisely due to this economic drain. This became doubly true when the era of "mature socialism" hit somewhere in the late 70s/early 80s.

  4. Yes, I had a lot of fun... by SlovakWakko · · Score: 2

    ...putting together a plotter for my ZX clone. The best thing about those time was - no MMORPGs to hook your kids at 6. The games of the time (and place) were so lame that it was more fun to learn BASIC :)

    1. Re:Yes, I had a lot of fun... by ezdiy · · Score: 1

      fukovo tetris2 represent ^_^

      FWIW the title is a bit incorrect, as both hackaday posts deal mostly with computer scene in czechoslovakia, not soviet bloc as a whole - MM is recycling/abridging existing computer history series from root.cz into english.

  5. lolwut by edittard · · Score: 4, Funny

    We covered what the personal computer revolution was like in Eastern Bloc countries back in December.

    Going from nothing to serious cyber espionage in four months is pretty impressive.

    --
    At the bottom of the /. main page it says 'Yesterday's News'. Well they got that right.
  6. My first joystick... by PhilHibbs · · Score: 1

    ...was built into a piece of drainpipe.

  7. Lame joke by jslaff · · Score: 1

    In America, you build computer. In Soviet Russia...oh, skip it.

  8. 3D printers by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

    Looking at all these home-made dot-matrix printers and pen plotters reminds me of the DIY 3D printers.

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    1. Re:3D printers by dale.furno · · Score: 0

      I guess nerds haven't really changed much.

  9. And the less admirable aspects ... by drnb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A former coworker who worked in a Soviet client state during that period told me that the distribution of printers was controlled because it was a "printing press" and could be used to create anti-government propaganda for distribution. That there were government offices where you could take your data to be printed if you were unable to justify why you needed a printer yourself.

    1. Re:And the less admirable aspects ... by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      ...told me that the distribution of printers was controlled because it was a "printing press" and could be used to create anti-government propaganda for distribution.

      Perhaps that's why the state-distributed printers and kits described in the article were so slow: it makes it too difficult to print mass amounts of "subversive" flyers. It wasn't necessarily lack of technology keeping them slow, but political paranoia.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:And the less admirable aspects ... by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 2

      A former coworker who worked in a Soviet client state during that period told me that the distribution of printers was controlled because it was a "printing press" and could be used to create anti-government propaganda for distribution.

      This is what frustrates me so much when people refer to the USA as a 'police state.' They have no idea what a real police state is - In a true police state you can't even have a printer.

    3. Re:And the less admirable aspects ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      They have no idea what a real police state is - In a true police state you can't even have a printer.

      And this is what frustrates me when people make the No True Scotsman argument - they don't even realise they've made it, or that the thing they're claiming runs a spectrum.

      Tell you what, you go and take a few photos of government buildings today, see what happens to you.

      I'll tell you what happened when a friend of mine, as a symbol of solidarity, took a photo of an American flag in another country - four cops and a dog tracked him down, searched him, deleted the photo, and threatened him with arrest for doing so without permission.

      At the request of the American ambassador, no less.

      So yeah, police state.

    4. Re:And the less admirable aspects ... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2

      Don't worry. You soon won't be able to have a 3D printer without a license, and thereby officially become a police state.

    5. Re:And the less admirable aspects ... by dbIII · · Score: 1

      It doesn't have to be a police state to not be able to have a printer or equivalent, we can fuck things up too even if the penalties are nowhere near as bad.
      I was in a western nation in the 1980s The hoops that had be jumped through to import a digital audio tape recorder for a small radio station were ridiculous and were placed in fear of violations of music company copyright. It took well over a year, possibly even into a second, and by then CD burners were available without ridiculous legal restrictions.
      The penalties for importing a DAT drive without a licence theoretically could go as far as jail time, utterly ridiculous, but I doubt any Judge handed that penalty out. The people who drafted the restrictions (music copyright industry) sound like they really wanted a police state for their special interests.

      With current events one way you can spot a police state is the events in China where some women have been jailed for planning a protest against domestic violence. The Chinese government actually agrees with their views 100%, but those women were setting up a political structure that was not part of The Party, so off to jail with them.

  10. 1%'ers not partners with fascists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Can we please stop repeating the blatantly false claim that Soviets were communist? They may have cynically flown the flag, but in practice they were unapologetically fascist (same small group of elites controls both government and industry).

    Can we please stop repeating the blatantly false claim that 1%'ers control industry under fascism? Fascism supports/mandates the creation of worker syndicates to counter the 1%'ers. But the more important fact is that both the owners and the syndicates were absolutely under the control of the gov't, neither were partners.

    1. Re:1%'ers not partners with fascists by Immerman · · Score: 2

      You're the only one who mentioned the 1%ers. One group controls both the government and industry - can you think of a better way to describe them than as a small group of elites?

      Also, I think your description of Fascism and worker syndicates is more generally applicable to... well pretty much every socio-economic system ever, really. Without some form of worker alliance the powerful will continue amassing a greater percentage of wealth until it begins to threaten the ability of the masses to continue producing it. Further, if they're too short-sighted to consider the long-term impacts of their actions.

      Under fascism neither the 1%ers nor the 99%ers necessarily have any say - though if the 1%ers haven't been stripped of their wealth to further enrich the elites, then they're probably getting at least some voice in the way things are run. Granted there will always be a 1%, statistically, but there's no need to make society's "middle management" hundreds of times more wealthy than the proletariat to keep them doing their jobs.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  11. In Soviet Russia... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In Soviet Russia, you are joke.

  12. Editor: 1980s' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Hula!

    1980s' decade's worth
    1980's year's worth

    Non-native writers exempted! It's a wonder you can write it at all!

  13. Thanks for the info. by franciscoeduca · · Score: 1

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  14. Thanks for the info. by franciscoeduca · · Score: 1

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