PDP1 3615
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Oh, actually it's a better case than most people realize. The West is coasting on it.
Not back then. Now the West is doing what they did...restricting knowledge distribution. Why do you think I keep harping about the same boring thing? It's to counter this compartmentalization I...
"All of us knew we were looking at something important, but I'm amazed at how fast the knowledge has spread out into the general population. As Xerox and IBM move to package everything, I wonder if there's still going to be room for the hackers. That's where this country is way ahead of the Japanese. They have such a highly structured society that they don't have any place in it for misfit hackers. But these are the people coming up with the truly creative ideas. This is where you get the real advances." --Jim Crutchfield --Tom Bbutt, The Eudaemonic Pie
Yes, like with supers, they decided to follow IBM. It was a conscious decision. They wanted IBM compatibility. And yet they didn't think much of the Series-1.
Beside the cited IEEE Annals special issue. I've had chances to talk to with lower and middle level admins of the former Soviet Union. We talked about numbers of VAX clones, for instance. They had no equivalent to the ARPAnet. They only stole Unix source late preferring to run VMS and RSX for 11s.
They were crippled by the followers of Lysenko and physicists (and to a lesser extent engineers and other scientists who thought of computers as big calculators. But it pure their math theory ahead.
Security through obscurity has existed for a long time. The Cold War response to do intellectualy stuff because of...
But then we had: "Potato chips, semiconductor chips, what's the difference? They are all chips." Michael Boskin.
I think the situation is a little more complex than that. We barely "freely" exchange ideas in the West. We have capitalistic compebreastion. The problem was nicely illustrated by the late Barry Leiner to me. He noted, with IBM's failure (see lynn's methods) of hierarchical top-down: It takes 2 to communicate. Computers can't stand alone. The Kahns and Cerfs deserve a lot of insight.
Also interesting history is Watson's decision not to follow AI. That may be lost to revisionist time.
Agreed, mostly. They also drank IBM's contagion. It is amusing to read their history as they fall into the same traps of neglect in the West. This is how you can separate out politico discussants. Just ask a few basis questions about software (compatibility).
But I think as a whole Klimenko deserves praise. He's very frank, honest and full of humor. It's not longer our fathers Cold War. It's a different Crusade now.
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