Comment by flohofwoe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by flohofwoe | Hacker News Reader

Note that the "GIF" at the top of the article is an actual embedded C64 emulator, where you can play "Raid over Moscow", took me a bit to recognize that.

Also interesting IMHO:

- the Stasi's hilarious German translation of English game titles (Samantha Fuchs - Entkleidungspoker)

- the fact that at least some people in the Stasi weren't complete technological dummies, this is a pretty good prediction for 1988 (which in "GDR technology years" is more like 1978): "In the future, he wrote, software would no longer require any physical medium to be disseminated. Which in turn would mean that it could no longer be intercepted during border controls. "

- the fact that freely exchanging software in the GDR was completely legal, because copyright did not apply to software: "The Leipzig District Court had ruled in a landmark decision in September 1979 that it considered software to be "neither a scientific work nor a creative achievement."

Lot's of other interesting and well researched details I didn't know about even though I grew up in the GDR and learned programming in a computer club there similar to the ones described in the article.

It's funny how close Brazil was to an eastern bloc country then.

-Foreign computer designs could be copied, beacause their IP did not apply (Unitron Mac was a notable example - actually better than the original);

-Copies of foreign software were sold in stores;

-There wasn't much variety in terms os cars (4 brands and few models) or home appliances;

-Buying foreign currency legally was restricted.

> It's funny how close Brazil was to an eastern bloc country then.

> -Foreign computer designs could be copied, beacause their IP did not apply (Unitron Mac was a notable example - actually better than the original);

Where can I find more information about such Brazilian computer clone designs? (if necessary, I can also read such texts in Portuguese, even though English or German texts are much easier for me)

here are some stories about these period

http://www.schwartzman.org.br/simon/comput.htm

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/29/business/brazil-s-prickly...

This video about the game scene that developed because of the politics is also interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU29Wqg_BVo

In the beginning of the 90's our economy opened and our then President cited our slow computers as one the main reasons for doing so (just PR talk, but it is interesting to note this)

The reason the IT policy failed in Brazil, IMHO, is because they did not do enough to spread knowledge and make the machines cheaper.

The UK had a marvelous project that put micros in every school (BBC Computer Literacy Project). You could see people use 8 bit micros in all sorts of applications (I remember a Master Compact kit being sold to handle magazine and newspaper subscriptions).

The Brazilian Sharp MSX (Hotbit) came out in 1985. It cost something like US$400. That same year, the Amiga 1000 came out. It was vastly superior, but it also cost 3 times as much. So I think the real failure was not putting to good use the technology Brazil had.

This site has all or most of them: http://www.old-computers.com/

It seems to be in trouble at the moment.

Unitron made Apple clones (I think the Apple II clones were licenced, but they ran into trouble when they tried to setup a joint venture for the Mac clone and decided to just copy it).

Gradiente and Sharp made MSX clones (they were licenced).

Microdigital made Spectrum clones (and also a very nice Apple II clone called TK3000): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TK90X

Destroying a market economy keeps leading to the same disastrous results.

That's the part statists keep ignoring.

Perhaps, then, we should be paying attention to recent theoretical research on post-capitalist market societies, or even post-capitalist non-market societies. We should learn from our mistakes.

Links?

Disclaimer: I'm not well versed in this topic's finer points, but I have some idea of the current and historical trends within it.

I'm mostly talking about exploitation theory, and two main contenders are UE and CECP; by aiming to eliminate a certain kind of exploitation in society, that will form the basis for a future society. Both of these have their origins in classical Marxian exploitation theory and mathematical Marxism. For instance, John Roemer suggests a market economy but one which is heavily redistributionist in terms of the material assets people can have. Along more traditional Marxist lines, Veneziani and Yoshihara are proponents of UE exploitation theory.

There's a good, recent overview of exploitation theory here[0] and some information about this area of research (including but not limited to exploitation theory) published by Veneziani in a book review on the state of Analytical Marxism.[1]

To understand the context of exploitation, labour and value and how these suggest a critique of capitalism (and thus the formation post-capitalist society) I'd look at my comment here[2] and the likes of Peter Hudis and Thomas T. Sekine. Most of the authors are socialists (in the Marxist tradition) but there are a few in anarchism, market anarchism and Communalism, though I'm not aware of their research.

[0] https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=h...

[1] https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/30864/1/MPRA_paper_30864.pdf

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18490388

Fun fact: "Raid over Moscow" was banned in West Germany in 1985. The ban was lifted in 2010.

Unrelated to Germany, East or West: back when I was a kid with a C64 and every game was pirated -- note: we didn't even know there was another way of getting games; we bought pirated tapes from stores with clerks! -- "Raid over Moscow" was a puzzling game to me because it looked cool and intriguing enough but I couldn't take off with the damn plane! I didn't have a manual or any sort of instructions, and I thought I was supposed to fly through what looked like a narrow horizontal gap in the hangar door, and obviously crashed time and time again because that's not what you're supposed to do -- there is no gap and you're supposed to open the hangar doors!

I still remember how thrilled I felt when I finally figured this out. It turned out the rest of the game wasn't as good as its opening scene and setting promised. In a way, taking off the with plane in Raid over Moscow was like figuring how to exit from vi.

That was one thing which was positive: no software copyrights.

The justification is a bit of a bummer though for someone who creates software, even if just for fun and not profit ;)

Sadly Germany went full 180 on this, with hallmark decision preventing resale of used, digitally distributed games in EU :( https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/02/10/german-court-rul...

One doesn't really create anything, programming is nothing but snake oil sales: in the end the only creation is magnetized media. So: "fog selling", or: "selling testicles as if they were kidneys". It took me a long time to realize this, but better late than never.

this is a pretty good prediction for 1988

Humm... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18403145 :)

Dang, true, I didn't make the connection between sending code through modem, and over radio :)

Many home computers of the time were equipped to decode data from audio cassettes. It's not implausible that the same audio could be beamed over the radio.

It was. This is how we received many ZX Spectrum games back in the day. There was a radio program broadcasting them every Sunday at 2PM sharp. Different times.

Actually BBC used to do it on UK.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com