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A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

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Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#91

Post by Jataman606 »

taxicabjesus wrote: post #85
LBJsPNS wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They tried. Gorbachev wanted to turn Russia into another Sweden. Bush the Elder convinced the World Bank not to loan to them unless they agreed to impose neoliberal economic policies. Which led to oligarchy. And then Putin.

What is "And then Putin" supposed to mean? Perhaps you mean that Mr. Putin is implementing Gorbachev's goal of "turning Russia into another Sweden", which was blocked by Bush the Elder and the collective west's looting of Russia in the post-Soviet period? My dad hates Mr. Putin because the television tells him Putin is a war criminal. Other sources say Mr. Putin is the moderate who keeps the extremists in the Kremlin…

Your "source" is calling Zelensky "the Imperial Puppet" and "comedian"[0], which makes me think it's probably even more biased towards Russia than western media are towards Ukraine.

[0] https://twitter.com/imetatronink/status/1605389284369784832

Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#92

Post by q-base »

earthscienceman wrote: post #73

I have posted this here before but I had the opportunity to live on Soviet/Russian icebreakers in the arctic for a period of time. Here's a small snippet of my photos, including of the control panels in the engine room and in the ship's bridge. Such an interesting perspective on utilitarianism: https://photos.app.goo.gl/CL6Rc4TE7ddZd4Xo7

Wow - how did you manage to get that opportunity?

Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#93

Post by cat_plus_plus »

smm11 wrote: post #48
neilv wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially if the interface was designed for high performance (unlike most UX today). One of my favorite was when I spent years starting to learn photojournalism on the side: the mechanics of using a camera is only a small part of it (it's mostly about understanding and conveying a story), but even at my student/amateur level, the muscle memory with pro DSLR and lenses was crazy-effective. I even got a shot that happ…

f8 and be there.

Said someone who only takes pictures in broad daylight. Even with modern tech and 100 watt light bulbs, you get enough motion blur and/or noise to ruin most shots indoors. With film that maxed out at ISO 800 and enlarger as the only postprocessing tool, forget it.

Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#94

Post by RedShift1 »

topspin wrote: post #75
RedShift1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use boring software. Software that releases every few months instead of weeks or even days. Software that is well documented and has an active supportive community.

I've had an experience like this recently in Java. One of the most storied and heinous areas of Java development: so-called "web services." This is the whole SOAP+WSDL hell that did incalculable damage to the Java language and can be credited with the rise of REST as a sane alternative. I had a system I needed to integrate into a workflow engine. I looked at the available interfaces and, noticing that the SOAP API wa…

I've been a programmer long enough to see things being reinvented over and over again, just under a different name or written in a different language, or now it's "cloud native" and "serverless" and "ready for microservices". The longer I witness this cycle of reinvention the more annoyed I become by it. It's crazy to think that all the work we did in the 80's, 90's and 00's is just thrown away like that, only for those same things to be reinvented and implemented from scratch again with all the experience from the previous iteration lost. Programmers seem to behave much more like the fashion industry than anything else.

Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#95

Post by cat_plus_plus »

elzbardico wrote: post #18

The biggest problem with the Soviet Union was Brezhnev not being able to keep with his economic reforms after 1974. Seeing Russia nowadays it is sometimes hard to believe that once they were the second economy in the world, before being removed from this post by Japan. Had they enacted Chinese style reforms they could have avoided the whole disastrous 90s

The hallmark of central planning is that the more technology advances, the more your economy falls apart due to the impossibility of calculating every detail centrally. Good read on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Plenty-Francis-Spufford/dp/155597...

Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#98

Post by bmitc »

Does anyone have any references to research or studies discussing the design and approach of control rooms? Research on human factors, human machine interfaces, and cognitive load? Fro example, I assume the airplane and astronaut industries have thought about this a lot.

Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#99

Post by jyriand »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #95
elzbardico wrote: post #18

The biggest problem with the Soviet Union was Brezhnev not being able to keep with his economic reforms after 1974. Seeing Russia nowadays it is sometimes hard to believe that once they were the second economy in the world, before being removed from this post by Japan. Had they enacted Chinese style reforms they could have avoided the whole disastrous 90s

The hallmark of central planning is that the more technology advances, the more your economy falls apart due to the impossibility of calculating every detail centrally. Good read on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Red-Plenty-Francis-Spufford/dp/155597...

Also known as "Socialist calculation debate"[1].

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_calculation_debate

Re: A collection of Soviet control rooms (2017)

#100

Post by TuringTest »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #60

Is it just me that cannot look at one of these photos without trying to work out what each switch does and what each guage is measuring?

I'd say most of us with technical minds will do that.

Problem is, figuring out most of them depends on having the thorough user manual at hand to read each gauge or button's purpose; AND understanding what that purpose means, which depends on having an engineering education from the same era when they were built.

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