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How communist Bulgaria became a leader in technology, robotics and sci-fi (2018)

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Re: How communist Bulgaria became a leader in technology, robotics and sci-fi (2018)

#31

Post by qubex »

cambalache wrote: post #21
qubex wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red Plenty is a fantastic and unusual book, I highly recommend it to everybody with even a cursory interest in mathematics, economics, logistics, information technology, politics, or history.

I didn't like it. I mean, the argument and data were interesting. What bothered me was the narrative, it was trite and disingenuous and clearly written by a clueless white guy.

I don’t really see how the author being white or male has anything to do with whether it’s accurate or not.

Re: How communist Bulgaria became a leader in technology, robotics and sci-fi (2018)

#32

Post by throwaway023421 »

nradov wrote: post #29
naveen99 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why the Russians or even the Chinese or Indians haven’t publicly attempted to clone Microsoft Windows (a desktop os). There is a Russian Linux distro. But I would think it would be more productive to have an international software arms race than a military / space arms race.

Wine is kind of a clone of Windows, and available to everyone. But in general Microsoft and Apple change their desktop OSs so fast that it's impractical for cloners to keep up. The clones will always have compatibility problems and fail to support some applications software. Just implementing the published APIs is insufficient because there's so much undocumented behavior.

Not so simple. If the clone gains significant market share it can enforce compatibility.

Re: How communist Bulgaria became a leader in technology, robotics and sci-fi (2018)

#33

Post by malkia »

IgorPartola wrote: post #3

My first computer was a home computer from Bulgaria called Pravetz 8D. It’s amazing that it never occurred to me until now to look it up on the web and sure enough there is a Wikipedia page about them. If not for that thing, I wouldn’t be a software engineer today.

Bulgarian here. My best friend had this one, it was an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oric based computer clone, and fun to use :) - all you need is a TV.

My father bought me Pravetz 8C (An Apple ][ /e, or was it /c) clone with 128KB RAM! (pr#8 hi-res mode) + floppy. It was more expensive than buying a good russian car back then, and I'm thankful for what he did for me!

We had few magazines, books to learn from, and were typing like crazy hex codes to get TETRIS, or someother game on.

For a long time, I thought it was the "Merchant" that made Karateka, only later to understand that was one of the earliest cracking groups (some of them later turned into demo groups), and that's how we got most of the software in.

Years before communism fell, our biggest hard-drive maker, started making their "own" games - which were complete rip offs of other western games, and "cyrilized" to the bone (like "Karateka" again).

Another friend of mine's mom was working in a company, back then durign communism and all they did was byte-code replace english into russian in lots of DOS apps - like PC Tools. Hence the weird abbreviation, as often russian would not fit. Really, it was direct hex-editing!

All, in all, I'm somehow thankful to the regime (ahem...) for giving me "free" of a lot, here in the US, is paid. Especially the programming clubs, courses, etc. Obviously that whole scheme did not scale :) but it was good times (while I was kid).

Re: How communist Bulgaria became a leader in technology, robotics and sci-fi (2018)

#34

Post by laumars »

ReptileMan wrote: post #4
IgorPartola wrote: post #3

My first computer was a home computer from Bulgaria called Pravetz 8D. It’s amazing that it never occurred to me until now to look it up on the web and sure enough there is a Wikipedia page about them. If not for that thing, I wouldn’t be a software engineer today.

I remember that nightmare ... the software was recorded on tapes.

That was the norm for 8bit micro computers of that era. It did have some accidental benefits too because some radio stations would air software for people to record

Re: How communist Bulgaria became a leader in technology, robotics and sci-fi (2018)

#35

Post by rayiner »

lyrr wrote: post #19
nradov wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USSR was never actually catching up. With access to more accurate historical data we now know that much of their reported economic development was based on falsified official statistics.

Gonna need a source for that.

https://tnsr.org/2018/02/assessing-soviet-economic-performan...

Re: How communist Bulgaria became a leader in technology, robotics and sci-fi (2018)

#36

Post by naveen99 »

macspoofing wrote: post #26
naveen99 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why the Russians or even the Chinese or Indians haven’t publicly attempted to clone Microsoft Windows (a desktop os). There is a Russian Linux distro. But I would think it would be more productive to have an international software arms race than a military / space arms race.

Because it's hard and especially hard for monolithic systems (i.e. governments) to go up against private enterprises in certain spaces. Governments are really good at funding cutting edge research that does not have an immediate or obvious market (e.g. early internet, space exploration, fundamental physics research, etc.). Governments are not good at actually competing in a space where there is a market and private c…

Yeah, I guess it’s more profitable for them to just collect taxes from Microsoft instead.

But I am not sure it can’t be done. What if the government deployed desktops to all citizens that were centrally administered, and requires them to be used for all government business / taxes, public services.

Clearly I am talking about a dystopian society... but I don’t see why some dictator or communist wouldn’t want to implement it. Aren’t large Chinese companies essentially branches of the government? Why doesn’t China want a fully controlled clone of Microsoft ? They clearly wanted their own google: baidu, their own amazon: Ali baba, their own Facebook: wechat...

It’s no more inefficient in principal to have government controlled personal computers as it is to have corporate controlled work computers. Work desktops are famously useless with all the required bloatware, encryption, antivirus, restrictive group policies and internet policies... but corporations think it’s worth the loss of efficiency, electricity, employee time to have a stranglehold on their computing. Why wouldn’t the super power hungry governments want the same ?

Re: How communist Bulgaria became a leader in technology, robotics and sci-fi (2018)

#37

Post by andrei_says_ »

atmin wrote: post #30
cosmolev wrote: post #28

I heard a story that at the opening ceremony of a semiconductor plant some Bulgarian communist party member made a speech where he said that semiconductors is just a first step and they are going in the direction of full conductors.

Not just some member, but the leader. He did know how to behave in this role (including allowing such stories become widespread), he was the leader for 45 years.

This is interesting. Are you implying a leader’s job was to act silly and maintain an image of a not-so-smart but relatable guy while the party was doing its shady deeds? A comic relief mask of sorts?

Re: How communist Bulgaria became a leader in technology, robotics and sci-fi (2018)

#38

Post by rayiner »

alexgmcm wrote: post #14
qubex wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red Plenty is a fantastic and unusual book, I highly recommend it to everybody with even a cursory interest in mathematics, economics, logistics, information technology, politics, or history.

I liked it - I felt it didn't really answer the question it seemed to set out with though. That is - there was a time when it looked like the USSR was genuinely going to catch up with and surpass the USA, how did they manage this and where did it go wrong?

Command economies don’t work. The USSR experienced growth initially because Russia was an economic backwater. That ran out of steam by the 1960s. The USSR never exceeded about 50% of US GDP, despite having a much larger population.

The USSR did some amazing things, for example in space. That just proves that a command economy can divert investment to specific ends. The USSR narrowly beat the US in several space milestones. We were close behind-such that we beat the USSR to the moon when their space program stumbled. But at the same time we developed advances in electronics, medicine, chemicals, etc., that weren’t even on the USSR’s radar. And we were doing all that while dedicating far less of our economy to investment (versus consumption).

Soviet industry was also breathtakingly inefficient. The USSR required five times as much energy to produce on unit of GNP than the US: http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/3500/1/RR-91-07.pdf. The Soviet Union had massive oil and gas reserves. But using vastly more concrete, steel, and energy to produce less durable goods than the US wasn’t sustainable.

Re: How communist Bulgaria became a leader in technology, robotics and sci-fi (2018)

#39

Post by cafard »

alexgmcm wrote: post #6
severak_cz wrote: post #2

I wonder if Bulgaria really became leader in tech. In Czechoslovakia we also had some sort of computer industry. We also had state security agents buying western tech in disguise and importing it home for cloning. I even know one guy who worked at computer reverse engineering institute back then. Also I have found memoirs of some random guy who worked as IT specialist for Stb (Czech equivalent of Stasi). However, thi…

I remember in Red Plenty it describes how the USSR decided to just copy IBM machines rather than build their own at some point. It's a shame as MSU was working on some really interesting stuff including the weird Setun ternary computer.

Didn't Dijkstra say that the USSR copying the IBM 360 architecture proved that it had lost the Cold War?

Re: How communist Bulgaria became a leader in technology, robotics and sci-fi (2018)

#40

Post by anticodon »

naveen99 wrote: post #18
nimbius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former Soviet satellite it was in an excellent position to do so. the USSR was first in space, first to the moon, and first to invent the universally programmable computer, the MESM. in 1958 they even invented the first mobile phones.

I wonder why the Russians or even the Chinese or Indians haven’t publicly attempted to clone Microsoft Windows (a desktop os). There is a Russian Linux distro. But I would think it would be more productive to have an international software arms race than a military / space arms race.

There's ReactOS. I'm not sure but I believe that many of ReactOS developers are Russian.

Although I don't understand the point of Windows clone.

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