On Friday, July 29, 2022 at 9:53:00 AM UTC-6, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> jtmpreno <no...@znet.com> writes:

> >That sounds like it came from Dr. Strangelove.
> Blake is a noted nutcase.

But since it _was_ an actual quote from Dr. Strangelove, doesn't that
mean it was intended ironically, and so the intent of his post was to
claim that the Asianometry video was bigoted against Russians?

John Savard

On Friday, July 29, 2022 at 6:14:50 PM UTC-6, Roger Blake wrote:

> No, I do not want to hold them in camps. They might find their way back.
> They must be totally and completely eradicated. Turned into vapour and
> poured into the stratosphere. This is not a "discussion". The Left must
> be utterly destroyed.

Oh, my.

Well, I guess that makes sense from your point of view. Why, I was just
watching a video on YouTube about how these left-wingers are too clever
in escaping from traps for them...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-0YzkmbCUU

Since you include in "the Left" not just destructive extremists,
but people who believe in freedom, but who believe in it for
everyone, not just for some, of course I will cheer when you,
and those like you, are prevented from achieving any of your
evil goals.

John Savard

On Saturday, August 6, 2022 at 3:19:38 AM UTC+10, Peter Flass wrote:
> Robin Vowels <robin....@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Friday, August 5, 2022 at 3:30:30 AM UTC+10, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> >> On Thu, 4 Aug 2022 19:05:25 +0300
> >> Bud Spencer <b...@campo.verano.it> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Magnetic retardation is a thing no software can undo.
> >> You could probably get a long way with a SQUID generated detailed
> >> map of the surface magnetisation and some fancy pattern analysis ... grant
> >> required.
> >>> Only archive quality optical medias are such that can keep data intact
> >>> for centuries.
> > .
> >> Of course this has not been tested. Clay tablets hold the current
> >> record for data retention but the bit density is terrible.
> > .
> > Punch cards?
> >
> If the rodents and bugs don’t get them they will last as long as a book
> printed on good paper, but it becomes very difficult to read them after a
> while. I think optical scanning, possibly hand-fed, works best later.
..
I have punch cards from the '60s, and they are in excellent condition.

Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
> Found this <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8>
> interesting. Reasons, why the Soviet Union/Russia never caught up to the
> US in the "computer race".
>
> Suppose one can project that are the same reasons Russia today can't do
> without massive technology support from outside.

I am not doing youtube so do not know what author claims.
Usual western explanation is that communist system was
inefficient and hostile to innovation. This explanation
has some merit, but management problems in communism
and in big western companies are similar so IMO it is
only partial explanation.

However, one can also look at fundamentals. Soviet
economy was smaller than western economy. At its best
times soviet block claimed to be about half of western
block. More important, advanced sectors formed much
smaller part of Soviet economy than in western economy.
In advanced part of economy there are very strong scale
and multiplier effects. Namely you pay developement
cost once, with moderate influence of resulting production
volume. By multipler effect I mean that to develop
advanced technology you need advanced parts and tools.
So speed at which you are able to develop advanced
technology depends very strongly on your techonlogy
level. And western embargo meant that Soviet block
could not import curucial advanced technology, it has
to develop its own. Since Soviet block was way behind
west in advanced technology, it also developed slower so
distance to west at best remainded fixed and in
many cases increased.

In central planning economy there is naive belif
that assigning more resources to critical sectors
will lead to faster developement and consequently
allow overtaking "unplanned" economy. However,
first of all, one needs to correctly identify
critical sectors, which is tricky. Second, more
resources does not mean more effect: sector must
be able to usfully "consume" added resources.
For example, if your semiconductor manufacturing
is limited by lack of knowledge and your research
is limited by lack of scientific instruments, you
get rather long delay from critical place to
desired effect. Third, every leading country now
has some level of planned economy and there is
state support for long term projects.

Another question is how much demand for computers
was in Soviet block. Computers were needed for
bomb and rocket research, but AFAICS Soviets
had this covered. Various report show that in
Soviet block computer centers frequently operated
one shift only. If there were pressing need
they should operate them at least two shifts.

Recently I have read Polish report (but Russian
thinking was probably similar) about
computer trends from 1969. One claim was that
in USA there is enough computers. Argument was
as follows: computer manufactures had free
production capacity and if there were more need
users would order more. So report predicted
that computer use would saturate at level similar
to USA in 1969. They also observe that to get
economic benefits from computers one had to
simultaneously improve orgranization, comuication,
etc. That needed time so report claimed that there
is no rush to increased computer use: one should
improve all things at their natural pace.

Of course claim about "saturated" computer market was
quite wrong, they did not predict that falling
computer prices would lead to much wider use. But
Soviet block planners were not the only ones to
make such mistake. Internal IBM documents from
1972 shows that IBM was quite scared that failing
manufacturing costs would lead to low prices for
computers and effectively "collapse" computer
market.

I think that it is hard to compare Russia now to
Soviet times. On one hand Russion economy now
is much smaller part of word economy than Soviet
economy was in Soviet times. And Russion seem
to be much more dependent on imports. OTOH
western embargo needed quite a long time to
have effect. And in modern times it is not
just Russia and west. In particular China has
a lot of technologies that Russia needs. I think
that China advanced sector is still significantly
smaller than western advanced sector. And China
is dependent on imports of western advanced
products. So China do not want confrontation
with west (at least just now). But if pressed to
hard they can make common block with Russia
just as self-defence.

--
Waldek Hebisch

On Wed, 10 Aug 2022 17:12:25 -0000 (UTC)
antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:

> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
> > Found this <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8>
> > interesting. Reasons, why the Soviet Union/Russia never caught up to the
> > US in the "computer race".
> >
> > Suppose one can project that are the same reasons Russia today can't do
> > without massive technology support from outside.
>
> I am not doing youtube so do not know what author claims.
> Usual western explanation is that communist system was
> inefficient and hostile to innovation. This explanation
> has some merit, but management problems in communism
> and in big western companies are similar so IMO it is
> only partial explanation.
>
> However, one can also look at fundamentals. Soviet
> economy was smaller than western economy. At its best

[]

Thanks for this.
> Waldek Hebisch

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

<antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl> wrote:
> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>> Found this <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8>
>> interesting. Reasons, why the Soviet Union/Russia never caught up to the
>> US in the "computer race".
>>
>> Suppose one can project that are the same reasons Russia today can't do
>> without massive technology support from outside.
>
> I am not doing youtube so do not know what author claims.
> Usual western explanation is that communist system was
> inefficient and hostile to innovation. This explanation
> has some merit, but management problems in communism
> and in big western companies are similar so IMO it is
> only partial explanation.
>

Most of the innovation in the West doesn’t come from the large companies,
bur from lone entrepreneurs, like Bill Hewlett or Jobs. Big companies
innovate by establishing small, independent operations like Xerox Parc,
Bell Labs, or IBM’s PC operation, and then leaving them alone. The Soviet
system was not particularly well-suited to do either. For a while
post-Soviet Russia seemed to be escaping from this, but Putinism has
strangled it in the womb.

--
Pete

Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
> <antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl> wrote:
> > Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
> >> Found this <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8>
> >> interesting. Reasons, why the Soviet Union/Russia never caught up to the
> >> US in the "computer race".
> >>
> >> Suppose one can project that are the same reasons Russia today can't do
> >> without massive technology support from outside.
> >
> > I am not doing youtube so do not know what author claims.
> > Usual western explanation is that communist system was
> > inefficient and hostile to innovation. This explanation
> > has some merit, but management problems in communism
> > and in big western companies are similar so IMO it is
> > only partial explanation.
> >
>
> Most of the innovation in the West doesn?t come from the large companies,
> bur from lone entrepreneurs, like Bill Hewlett or Jobs. Big companies
> innovate by establishing small, independent operations like Xerox Parc,
> Bell Labs, or IBM?s PC operation, and then leaving them alone.

AFAICS most strictly computer innovations in 1950-1970 period
came from big companies, in particular IBM. Smaller companies
were not able to spend enough resources to maintain competitive
offer.

I am not sure what you consider as invention of Jobs as
"lone entrepreneur". IIUC already Apple was join effort
with Wozniak and I would brand it more as catching
obvious opportunity (which most folks can not do) than
invention. Later Jobs acted as boss of company and he
was bringing to market inventions done by other folks.

> The Soviet
> system was not particularly well-suited to do either.

I affraid the western people have too simplified view of
what happened in Soviet block. There were research institutes,
and they had reasonable level of autonomy.

Just as an example, first Polish computer was build in
Math Institute of Polish Academy of Science. At that
time institute had probably 40 or 50 researches
(mathematicians). Director of institute believed that
computers were important in general and could be
valuable tool for math research. So two mathematicians
helped with logical parts and later with programming
and they hired team of 3 or 4 electronic engeneers to
build computer. They had major problems with components
stability. IIUC after careful selection they somewhat
managed with passives made in Soviet block (mostly in
Poland) but they had to use tubes imported from west
(England IIRC). Still, their initial logical design
never worked: they tuned some functional block so that
it worked then few days later when they tried to
integrated it with another block the first one needed
re-tuning. After 2 years they gave up this design and
tried much simpler one which worked.

To give you some different data points: close to end of
comunist era export and import were approximately 5%
of GDP. To put it differently 95% of good consumed in
Poland was actually produced in Poland. I think that
earlier in communist time role of foreign trade was not
bigger and probably smaller. After 1970 Poland bought
several western licences so corresponding product were
really western construction. But before 1970 licences
from west were quite rare (there were licences between
different countries of Soviet block). So quite a lot
of things made and used in Poland was domestic
construction or maybe construction from some other
part of Soviet block. I have also saw interesting
claim about Czechoslovakia: supposedly if you looked
at all products made in the world 65% had similar
product made in Czechoslovakia. If you consider that
there is a lot of specialized product and Czechoslovakia
is rather small country, this implies significant
level of design and technological activity.

One can claim that spreading effort on so many product
is inefficient. And that much of inventions made in
Soviet block was really reinventing the wheel. OTOH
some of that was necessary because west imposed
embargo. Some other was demeed necessary to make
countries self-sufficinet. Some was perceived as
important growth market so countries tried to
build their potential. AFAICS US few times did
similar thing with semiconductors: even though
semiconductors were available at lower price from
foreign vendors USA insisted on boosting
domestic production.

> For a while
> post-Soviet Russia seemed to be escaping from this, but Putinism has
> strangled it in the womb.

I do not know about Russia, but I know something about Poland.
In first few years after fall of communism Poland lost probably
about 30% of its GDP. In particular old computer industry
essentially vanished. We got better imported computers
at lower price (but previously embargo blocked state
entities form buing western computers, so own production
was justified). There were some innovation, for example
one small firm used AMD bitslice processors to build
functional eqivalent of old Polish computers (there was
some demand to keep existing system running). But this
probably had more to do with lifting embargo than with
change of economic system. In particular already
during communist times firms that managed to get DRAM
chips offered memory upgrades to core-memory computers.
There were some addons to home computers and PC-s, again
this already started in communist period. There was
certainly growth in economic activity of small firms.
However most of that happened in low-tech parts and
agriculture. There _may_ be more innovation now. But
there is little that is visible: product that one sees
on market are mostly foreign constructions. I heard that
Poland now is large (possibly biggest in Europe) manufacturer
of TV-s. But AFAIK this is really assembling foreign
(Asian) construction with only simplest part done in
Poland and "interesting" part done abroad. There was
some activity of small software vendors. But I am
not aware of any major Polish software house (there is
at least one Google campus and some other foreign
companies are also present).

--
Waldek Hebisch

On 2022-08-11, antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl <antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl> wrote:
> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> <antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl> wrote:
>> > Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>> >> Found this <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8>
>> >> interesting. Reasons, why the Soviet Union/Russia never caught up to the
>> >> US in the "computer race".
>> >>
> not aware of any major Polish software house (there is
> at least one Google campus and some other foreign
> companies are also present).
>

A few points I would like to make;

Poland was in the forefront of the effort to breaking the Enigma Code,
and in showing it could be done. That was, of course, when fascism was
`bad' and those opposing it were `good'.

I do not think that the existence of such things as facebook, twitter,
etc, are a big gain for humanity.

Big companies do not really want innovation, they see it as a threat to
their dominance. Microsoft is intentionably evil.

`Wroclaw' was Breslau?. Is Silesia going to secede?. I get a headache
trying to understand East European politics. How many Magyar speakers in
Transylvania?

There is a constant theme among people from beyond the Oder,
Under communism, I had a house, not a great house, but a house, under
communism, I had a job, not a great job, but a job, etc,etc

:

<antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl> wrote:
> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> <antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl> wrote:
>>> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>> Found this <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8>
>>>> interesting. Reasons, why the Soviet Union/Russia never caught up to the
>>>> US in the "computer race".
>>>>
>>>> Suppose one can project that are the same reasons Russia today can't do
>>>> without massive technology support from outside.
>>>
>>> I am not doing youtube so do not know what author claims.
>>> Usual western explanation is that communist system was
>>> inefficient and hostile to innovation. This explanation
>>> has some merit, but management problems in communism
>>> and in big western companies are similar so IMO it is
>>> only partial explanation.
>>>
>>
>> Most of the innovation in the West doesn?t come from the large companies,
>> bur from lone entrepreneurs, like Bill Hewlett or Jobs. Big companies
>> innovate by establishing small, independent operations like Xerox Parc,
>> Bell Labs, or IBM?s PC operation, and then leaving them alone.
>
> AFAICS most strictly computer innovations in 1950-1970 period
> came from big companies, in particular IBM. Smaller companies
> were not able to spend enough resources to maintain competitive
> offer.
>
> I am not sure what you consider as invention of Jobs as
> "lone entrepreneur". IIUC already Apple was join effort
> with Wozniak and I would brand it more as catching
> obvious opportunity (which most folks can not do) than
> invention. Later Jobs acted as boss of company and he
> was bringing to market inventions done by other folks.
>
>> The Soviet
>> system was not particularly well-suited to do either.
>
> I affraid the western people have too simplified view of
> what happened in Soviet block. There were research institutes,
> and they had reasonable level of autonomy.
>
> Just as an example, first Polish computer was build in
> Math Institute of Polish Academy of Science. At that
> time institute had probably 40 or 50 researches
> (mathematicians). Director of institute believed that
> computers were important in general and could be
> valuable tool for math research. So two mathematicians
> helped with logical parts and later with programming
> and they hired team of 3 or 4 electronic engeneers to
> build computer. They had major problems with components
> stability. IIUC after careful selection they somewhat
> managed with passives made in Soviet block (mostly in
> Poland) but they had to use tubes imported from west
> (England IIRC). Still, their initial logical design
> never worked: they tuned some functional block so that
> it worked then few days later when they tried to
> integrated it with another block the first one needed
> re-tuning. After 2 years they gave up this design and
> tried much simpler one which worked.
>
> To give you some different data points: close to end of
> comunist era export and import were approximately 5%
> of GDP. To put it differently 95% of good consumed in
> Poland was actually produced in Poland. I think that
> earlier in communist time role of foreign trade was not
> bigger and probably smaller. After 1970 Poland bought
> several western licences so corresponding product were
> really western construction. But before 1970 licences
> from west were quite rare (there were licences between
> different countries of Soviet block). So quite a lot
> of things made and used in Poland was domestic
> construction or maybe construction from some other
> part of Soviet block. I have also saw interesting
> claim about Czechoslovakia: supposedly if you looked
> at all products made in the world 65% had similar
> product made in Czechoslovakia. If you consider that
> there is a lot of specialized product and Czechoslovakia
> is rather small country, this implies significant
> level of design and technological activity.
>

The Czech Republic has always been one of the more advanced countries in
the area, dating back at least to Hapsburg times. The Skoda works was a
premier cannon founder in two wars.

--
Pete

On Wed, 10 Aug 2022 17:12:25 -0000 (UTC), antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl wrote:
>
> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>> Found this <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8>
>> interesting. Reasons, why the Soviet Union/Russia never caught up to the
>> US in the "computer race".
>>
>> Suppose one can project that are the same reasons Russia today can't do
>> without massive technology support from outside.
>
> I am not doing youtube so do not know what author claims.

Get youtube-dl and download. Youtube doesn't know anything about you but
the IP address.

> Usual western explanation is that communist system was
> inefficient and hostile to innovation. This explanation
> has some merit, but management problems in communism
> and in big western companies are similar so IMO it is
> only partial explanation.

Yes, that's what the video was focused on.

> However, one can also look at fundamentals. Soviet
> economy was smaller than western economy. At its best
> times soviet block claimed to be about half of western
> block. More important, advanced sectors formed much
> smaller part of Soviet economy than in western economy.

True. But it shouldn't be overlooked they put a lot of money into the
space race (and won in my opinion; putting the first satellite and man
into orbit), and thus into the arms race.
--
Andreas

On Wed, 10 Aug 2022 12:09:41 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:
>
> <antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl> wrote:
>>>
>> I am not doing youtube so do not know what author claims.
>> Usual western explanation is that communist system was
>> inefficient and hostile to innovation. This explanation
>> has some merit, but management problems in communism
>> and in big western companies are similar so IMO it is
>> only partial explanation.
>>
>
> Most of the innovation in the West doesn’t come from the large companies,
> bur from lone entrepreneurs, like Bill Hewlett or Jobs. Big companies
> innovate by establishing small, independent operations like Xerox Parc,
> Bell Labs, or IBM’s PC operation, and then leaving them alone. The Soviet
> system was not particularly well-suited to do either. For a while
> post-Soviet Russia seemed to be escaping from this, but Putinism has
> strangled it in the womb.

I say it were the universities. Also BELL Labs, as you mentioned, coming
up with innovative products, like the laser, although disputed, and the
transistor.
--
Andreas

Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
><antispam@math.uni.wroc.pl> wrote:
>> Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>> Found this <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8>
>>> interesting. Reasons, why the Soviet Union/Russia never caught up to the
>>> US in the "computer race".
>>>
>>> Suppose one can project that are the same reasons Russia today can't do
>>> without massive technology support from outside.
>>
>> I am not doing youtube so do not know what author claims.
>> Usual western explanation is that communist system was
>> inefficient and hostile to innovation. This explanation
>> has some merit, but management problems in communism
>> and in big western companies are similar so IMO it is
>> only partial explanation.
>>
>
>Most of the innovation in the West doesn’t come from the large companies,
>bur from lone entrepreneurs, like Bill Hewlett or Jobs

I'd say most of it comes from academia originally. Atansaoff/Berry,
Eckart/Mauchly, Rivest/Shamir/Adelman, Diffie/Hellman, Tanenbaum, Backus,
Hollerith, Hopper, Knuth, Lamport, Neumann, Patterson, Richie/Thompson,
Turing, Wirth, Dijkstra, et alia.

According to Scott Lurndal <slp53@pacbell.net>:
>I'd say most of it comes from academia originally. Atansaoff/Berry,
>Eckart/Mauchly, Rivest/Shamir/Adelman, Diffie/Hellman, Tanenbaum, Backus,
>Hollerith, Hopper, Knuth, Lamport, Neumann, Patterson, Richie/Thompson,
>Turing, Wirth, Dijkstra, et alia.

Backus did his interesting work at IBM. Hollerith set up his own company
to provide punch card equipment for the US Census, later merged into IBM.

Ritchie and Thompson were at Bell Labs.

Eckert and Mauchly built ENIAC at the U of Pennsylvania but only
because they had a large contract from the US Army. Once it was done
they left to set up their own company to build the quite different
Univac. Hopper worked for the Univac company and was in the US Navy
reserve.

You left out Von Neumann who oversaw the computer project at the
Institute for Advanced Study, an odd sort of college with faculty
but no students, but did important work for the government and
industrial clients. He ended up knowing way too much about atomic
bombs to work for anyone but the government. When he died there
was reputedly an armed guard at the door to his hospital room in
case he should blab secrets in his sleep.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> writes:
>According to Scott Lurndal <slp53@pacbell.net>:
>>I'd say most of it comes from academia originally. Atansaoff/Berry,
>>Eckart/Mauchly, Rivest/Shamir/Adelman, Diffie/Hellman, Tanenbaum, Backus,
>>Hollerith, Hopper, Knuth, Lamport, Neumann, Patterson, Richie/Thompson,
>>Turing, Wirth, Dijkstra, et alia.
>
>Backus did his interesting work at IBM. Hollerith set up his own company
>to provide punch card equipment for the US Census, later merged into IBM.
>
>Ritchie and Thompson were at Bell Labs.
>
>Eckert and Mauchly built ENIAC at the U of Pennsylvania but only
>because they had a large contract from the US Army. Once it was done
>they left to set up their own company to build the quite different
>Univac. Hopper worked for the Univac company and was in the US Navy
>reserve.
>
>You left out Von Neumann who oversaw the computer project at the

I left out the Von, but not the Neumann...

I suppose I meant more that it was individuals, not companies that
matter in this discussion (the context of which you snipped).

And much began with Atansoff, a professor at a midwestern land
grant college. I had the honor to take him to dinner once in
1981; very interesting discussions that evening about the past
and the future as his interests by then were more in natural
language processing.

On Friday, August 12, 2022 at 4:11:16 AM UTC+10, John Levine wrote:
> According to Scott Lurndal <sl...@pacbell.net>:
> >I'd say most of it comes from academia originally. Atansaoff/Berry,
> >Eckart/Mauchly, Rivest/Shamir/Adelman, Diffie/Hellman, Tanenbaum, Backus,
> >Hollerith, Hopper, Knuth, Lamport, Neumann, Patterson, Richie/Thompson,
> >Turing, Wirth, Dijkstra, et alia.
> Backus did his interesting work at IBM. Hollerith set up his own company
> to provide punch card equipment for the US Census, later merged into IBM.
>
> Ritchie and Thompson were at Bell Labs.
>
> Eckert and Mauchly built ENIAC at the U of Pennsylvania but only
> because they had a large contract from the US Army. Once it was done
> they left to set up their own company to build the quite different
> Univac. Hopper worked for the Univac company and was in the US Navy
> reserve.
>
> You left out Von Neumann who oversaw the computer project at the
> Institute for Advanced Study, an odd sort of college with faculty
> but no students, but did important work for the government and
> industrial clients. He ended up knowing way too much about atomic
> bombs to work for anyone but the government. When he died there
> was reputedly an armed guard at the door to his hospital room in
> case he should blab secrets in his sleep.
..
And Alan Turing was at NPL when he designed the ACE.

On 30 Jul 2022 18:42:47 GMT, maus <maus@dmaus.org> wrote:

>On 2022-07-30, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 29 Jul 2022 13:04:03 -0400, Dan Espen wrote:
>>>
>>> scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
>>>
>>>> Blake is a noted nutcase.
>>>
>>> Actually he has advocated multiple times for killing a full half of
>>> the population of the USA. A thoroughly disgusting character.
>>
>> But there were some people who liked to be nuked.
>>
>> Just recently I saw a video where 5 officers voluntarily had themselves
>> "nuked" by stranding on the ground of the Nevada desert with a relatively
>> small nuke was detonated on top. Besides a short burst of heat and a
>> small shockwave nothing happened to them. Some lived to become 90 years old.
>>
>><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob> (5th paragraph).
>
>My memory of an incident like that is different. How many of the early
>workers in atomic bombs died early. How old was Feynman or Oppenheimer
>when they died??

Feynman was 69, while the proximate cause of death was declining
dialysis for kidney failure, the kidney failure was the result of a
chain that started with liposarcoma.

Oppenheimer died at 62 of throat cancer. He was known as a
chain-smoker so this might not have been related to nuclear research.

>> Reason for that publicity stunt was to ensure the American population
>> that the United States might explode some nukes above them. Because there
>> did not exist a technology to shoot down a number of (Russian) bombers
>> the idea was to explode a nuke in the center of them to take them
>> out.
>
> I remember a story that the US exploded a bomb well above hawaii to
> see what would happen. A lot of computers had to be replaced. I
> remember the muppet show, Dr. Bunsen honeydew and his assistant
> Beaker. Go back to the 1930, and the support that some peoplein high
> places gave to `eugenics'.

That would have been Starfish Prime. It, however, was not "well above
Hawaii", it was 900 miles away and at an altitude of 250 miles. It
knocked out 300 street lights, set off numerous burglar alarms, and
damaged a telephone company microwave link, and also disabled 3
satellites, one of which was Telstar 1, however the satellite damage
was a delayed effect due to cumulative damage from passage through a
radiation belt.

On Tue, 02 Aug 2022 11:21:12 -0500, D.J. <chucktheouch@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Mon, 01 Aug 2022 22:48:41 -0400, Andreas Kohlbach
><ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>On Mon, 01 Aug 2022 09:42:13 -0500, D.J. wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sun, 31 Jul 2022 18:05:44 -0700, Peter Flass
>>> <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>D.J. <chucktheouch@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> On Sun, 31 Jul 2022 17:20:01 -0400, Andreas Kohlbach
>>>>> <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>>>>>> On Sun, 31 Jul 2022 13:00:08 -0500, D.J. wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> We, my parents and I, visited the dome in Maine where the Telstars
>>>>>>> were controlled from, and the expensive transatlantic phone calls went
>>>>>>> through. I tried to take a photo on the antenna, inside the geodesic
>>>>>>> dome, but I didn't have a flash. I think I still have the B&W photos
>>>>>>> of the exterior.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Could be worth trying to digitally archiving them.
>>>>>
>>>>> Have to find them... in one of around 100 storage boxes in a storage
>>>>> shed where the wasps like to fly around and sting. I do try looking
>>>>> through them. Found some of my early photo albums, but not those
>>>>> pictures.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Wow, I thought I was bad! I’ve got probably 30 boxes in my office, and am
>>>>trying to work thru them a few at a time. Easy to toss out the “why did I
>>>>take this” photos if hills and lakes, but that still leaves a lot. My goal
>>>>is to digitize the few of them worth saving and have them all cleaned out.
>>>
>>> Back last century when my dad was in the US Army, he asked the mover
>>> why our furniture weghed so much. The boss of the truck pointed to me
>>> and said half of the weight was mine.
>>>
>>> I have been finding, and shredding into confetti, my university
>>> homework. And other things I don't need.
>>
>>Sad when documents fade out of existence because people who have access
>>don't bother and eventually pass away. A company specialized in clearing
>>out might just turn them into confetti.
>
>Most of the stuff we wrote at university was rather simplistic,
>looking back on it.
>
>>One guy did it though Christmas a few years ago as gift. He had Amiga
>>floppy disks where documents were saved I wrote in the 1980s. He managed
>>to dump the content into a file. And although I don't own an Amiga
>>anymore I could fire up an emulator to see them again. Was a great
>>feeling of nostalgia for me.
>
>I still have the hundred or so Fred Fish floppies I bought for $1 each
>decades ago. My relatives want me to throw them out, probably happen
>after I die.
>
>I have seen them online, so it may not be a loss.

FWIW, when I study these days I do my "homework" in OneNote on a
Surface. Eventually I guess I'll use up my terabyte and have to purge
some of it, but until then there it sits on Microsoft's cloud until
they decided they need the space.
>--
>Jim

On Sat, 13 Aug 2022 14:43:39 -0400, J. Clarke wrote:
>
> On 30 Jul 2022 18:42:47 GMT, maus <maus@dmaus.org> wrote:
>
>>On 2022-07-30, Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> wrote:
>
>>> Just recently I saw a video where 5 officers voluntarily had themselves
>>> "nuked" by stranding on the ground of the Nevada desert with a relatively
>>> small nuke was detonated on top. Besides a short burst of heat and a
>>> small shockwave nothing happened to them. Some lived to become 90 years old.
>>>
>>><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob> (5th paragraph).
>>
>>My memory of an incident like that is different. How many of the early
>>workers in atomic bombs died early. How old was Feynman or Oppenheimer
>>when they died??
>
> Feynman was 69, while the proximate cause of death was declining
> dialysis for kidney failure, the kidney failure was the result of a
> chain that started with liposarcoma.
>
> Oppenheimer died at 62 of throat cancer. He was known as a
> chain-smoker so this might not have been related to nuclear research.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi> was
nuked twice (Hiroshima and then Nagasaki), but lived to become 93 years
old in 2010.
--
Andreas

On Friday, July 29, 2022 at 8:19:42 AM UTC+10, Roger Blake wrote:
> On 2022-07-27, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
> > Found this <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8>
> > interesting. Reasons, why the Soviet Union/Russia never caught up to the
> > US in the "computer race".
..
> The Russkie talks big but frankly he's short on know-how. You can't expect
> a bunch of ignorant peons to understand a machine like some of our boys.
..
Well, they did manage to send a rocket to the moon before the Americans,
and built the Concordski (in competition to the Concord).

On Sat, 13 Aug 2022 23:20:25 -0700 (PDT), Robin Vowels
<robin.vowels@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Friday, July 29, 2022 at 8:19:42 AM UTC+10, Roger Blake wrote:
>> On 2022-07-27, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
>> > Found this <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8>
>> > interesting. Reasons, why the Soviet Union/Russia never caught up to the
>> > US in the "computer race".
>.
>> The Russkie talks big but frankly he's short on know-how. You can't expect
>> a bunch of ignorant peons to understand a machine like some of our boys.
>.
>Well, they did manage to send a rocket to the moon before the Americans,
>and built the Concordski (in competition to the Concord).

But their copy of the Space Shuttle never got anywhere.
--
Jim

On Sun, 14 Aug 2022 08:26:58 -0500
D.J. <chucktheouch@gmnol.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 13 Aug 2022 23:20:25 -0700 (PDT), Robin Vowels
> <robin.vowels@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Friday, July 29, 2022 at 8:19:42 AM UTC+10, Roger Blake wrote:
> >> On 2022-07-27, Andreas Kohlbach <a...@spamfence.net> wrote:
> >> > Found this <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnHdqPBrtH8>
> >> > interesting. Reasons, why the Soviet Union/Russia never caught up to
> >> > the US in the "computer race".
> >.
> >> The Russkie talks big but frankly he's short on know-how. You can't
> >> expect a bunch of ignorant peons to understand a machine like some of
> >> our boys.
> >.
> >Well, they did manage to send a rocket to the moon before the Americans,
> >and built the Concordski (in competition to the Concord).

Also put things, animals and then a man into space while the
Americans were still reeling in shock from beep-beep of Sputnik.

Mir was for a long time the largest and longest occupied thing in
space, the ISS has fairly recently beaten it for longevity. They still hold
the record for the longest anyone has spent in space (437 days), the claim
was they were doing the groundwork for a Mars mission. Until the Soviet
Union collapsed there was every indication that the Russians had the only
serious space program on the planet, around 1980 they were tracked launching
something twice a week on average.

> But their copy of the Space Shuttle never got anywhere.

Bad copy of a crap design, never likely to get anywhere.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

On 2022-08-14, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Aug 2022 08:26:58 -0500
> D.J. <chucktheouch@gmnol.com> wrote:
>
>
> Mir was for a long time the largest and longest occupied thing in
> space, the ISS has fairly recently beaten it for longevity. They still hold
> the record for the longest anyone has spent in space (437 days), the claim
> was they were doing the groundwork for a Mars mission. Until the Soviet
> Union collapsed there was every indication that the Russians had the only
> serious space program on the planet, around 1980 they were tracked launching
> something twice a week on average.
>
>> But their copy of the Space Shuttle never got anywhere.
>
> Bad copy of a crap design, never likely to get anywhere.
>
My Father and Mother had worked in the US before coming home, and had
great respect for it, as I still do.

My Father subscribed to an US magazine called something like `Men Only',
which had articles proving the USSR space successes were faked. Kinda
like the recenter claims that the US Moonshots were fake as well.

--
greymausg@mail.org

Fe Fi Fo Fum, I smell the stench of an influencer.
We're all going to die, horribly. Have a nice day, meanwhile

On 14 Aug 2022 19:52:17 GMT
maus <maus@dmaus.org> wrote:

> My Father subscribed to an US magazine called something like `Men Only',
> which had articles proving the USSR space successes were faked. Kinda
> like the recenter claims that the US Moonshots were fake as well.

Like the moonshots many of the Russian launches were tracked by the
kids at Kettering Grammar School where they built a radio telescope for the
purpose. Now *that* was a real science project!

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith
Odds and Ends at http://www.sohara.org/

On 14 Aug 2022 19:52:17 GMT, maus <maus@dmaus.org> wrote:
>On 2022-08-14, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>> On Sun, 14 Aug 2022 08:26:58 -0500
>> D.J. <chucktheouch@gmnol.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Mir was for a long time the largest and longest occupied thing in
>> space, the ISS has fairly recently beaten it for longevity. They still hold
>> the record for the longest anyone has spent in space (437 days), the claim
>> was they were doing the groundwork for a Mars mission. Until the Soviet
>> Union collapsed there was every indication that the Russians had the only
>> serious space program on the planet, around 1980 they were tracked launching
>> something twice a week on average.
>>
>>> But their copy of the Space Shuttle never got anywhere.
>>
>> Bad copy of a crap design, never likely to get anywhere.
>>
>My Father and Mother had worked in the US before coming home, and had
>great respect for it, as I still do.
>
>My Father subscribed to an US magazine called something like `Men Only',
>which had articles proving the USSR space successes were faked. Kinda
>like the recenter claims that the US Moonshots were fake as well.

Some folks like to pretend that space doesn't exist to. But I don't
believe them.

From a show called 'What on earth ? on Science channel, they discuss
the Buran. seems Russia hacked the NASA site, and did their best to
steal NASA's space shuttle plans. But NASA noticed and changed some of
the blueprints in thge files the russians were lookin at. That is why
it failed.

And if either Russia or the U.S's space launches were faked, China
would have gleefully let the world population know.
--
Jim

On 2022-08-14, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
> On 14 Aug 2022 19:52:17 GMT
> maus <maus@dmaus.org> wrote:
>
>> My Father subscribed to an US magazine called something like `Men Only',
>> which had articles proving the USSR space successes were faked. Kinda
>> like the recenter claims that the US Moonshots were fake as well.
>
> Like the moonshots many of the Russian launches were tracked by the
> kids at Kettering Grammar School where they built a radio telescope for the
> purpose. Now *that* was a real science project!
>

Yes, a great time for science. If I remember, Jodrell bank (sp?) was
paid for mostly with public subscriptions. Millions of frogs were
tortured to death to fullfill the needs of science courses.

--
greymausg@mail.org

Fe Fi Fo Fum, I smell the stench of an influencer.
We're all going to die, horribly. Have a nice day, meanwhile