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Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

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Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#71

Post by donw »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #28
karaterobot wrote: post #19

> It’s believed that Karpiński paved the way for today’s common use of paging in computer memory systems. So, I didn't know anything about the K-202, so this is very interesting to me. However, are we sure that it influenced anything , given that only about 230 of them were ever made, and those were destroyed at the factory? How would knowledge of his team's innovations, let alone specific information, have leaked ou…

From the article, >Thus in 1970, the Microcomputers Plant was established. Located in Warsaw, it employed Polish workers but used British components and financing. The British were involved in every step.

As an aside, it's really kind of nuts how much backing and investment the Communists have received from the West, including Wall Street, all the way to the Russian Revolution, and continuing to the present day.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#72

Post by 6d6b73 »

ein0p wrote: post #70
HayBale wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prewar Poland was a military dictatorship(mild but was) in the permanent state of crisis, on a brink of a civil war with all of its minorities. And it is a wild take to blame communists for the nazi atrocities. But communist solved most of the problems that prewar Poland would have problem of solving. Yeah Polish tech was amazing especially if you consider the resources

Communists also happen to be the sole reason why Polish people still exist, because a certain Austrian painter was going to eradicate them all after he was done with the Jews.

Communists partitioned Poland in 1939 together with Germans. War would take a different direction if they didn't join Nazis. They were not really the good guys.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#73

Post by omega3 »

ein0p wrote: post #70
HayBale wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prewar Poland was a military dictatorship(mild but was) in the permanent state of crisis, on a brink of a civil war with all of its minorities. And it is a wild take to blame communists for the nazi atrocities. But communist solved most of the problems that prewar Poland would have problem of solving. Yeah Polish tech was amazing especially if you consider the resources

Communists also happen to be the sole reason why Polish people still exist, because a certain Austrian painter was going to eradicate them all after he was done with the Jews.

With friends like this… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_of_Polish...

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#74

Post by ein0p »

6d6b73 wrote: post #72
ein0p wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communists also happen to be the sole reason why Polish people still exist, because a certain Austrian painter was going to eradicate them all after he was done with the Jews.

Communists partitioned Poland in 1939 together with Germans. War would take a different direction if they didn't join Nazis. They were not really the good guys.

Actually no, the war would take the exact same direction because Hitler did not consider Slavs to be human. It would have just got to the USSR a couple of years before it was even remotely ready for the war, and, ironically, would probably cause it to lose the war, which, let me remind you, would lead to full eradication of Poles and Poland. To accuse the USSR of “joining Nazis” would require you to be completely unaware of the historical context, and forget that Poland itself “joined Nazis” in a non-aggression pact in 1934 (5 years before Molotov-Ribbentrop pact), and occupied parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938. By that logic a lot of other countries in Europe (including Britain) “joined Nazis” by signing agreements with them and partitioning other states such as Czechoslovakia.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#75

Post by ein0p »

omega3 wrote: post #73
ein0p wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communists also happen to be the sole reason why Polish people still exist, because a certain Austrian painter was going to eradicate them all after he was done with the Jews.

With friends like this… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_repressions_of_Polish...

And I’m not arguing with that, Stalin also did massive purges of his own officers, leaving the red army severely deficient right before the war, but as horrible as this is, this is not total genocide, which is what awaited Poland had the USSR not won the war.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#76

Post by pinewurst »

surfingdino wrote: post #31
sieszpak wrote: post #13

Many Poles have distinguished themselves in various fields of science and life. I recognize Madame Curie, Copernicus, Ulam, Pope John Paul II, Chopin, Polanski, and perhaps Wozniak. I had a Polish professor at Mellon University who talked a bit about it, and there was a lot.

Others include Marek Holynski https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek_Ho%C5%82y%C5%84ski (co-inventor of OpenGL, told by the visiting Russian commie inspector to focus his 3d research on "serious" things like CNC machining), Stefan Kudelski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Kudelski (Nagra audio and video recorders), Staniskaw Ulam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Ulam (Manhattan Project, Monte Carlo metho…

Ulam was Jewish and there’s a difference. My grandfather was from the same area, Galicia and generation and he’d be damned if he’d self-identify as a Pole.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#77

Post by scj »

mepian wrote: post #34

The tired cliche of comparing the subject to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (celebrities from the later microcomputer era, one of which is not even a hardware guy) made me cringe, why not compare him instead to Ken Olsen and Wesley Clark, the men who actually built first minicomputers in the West, or to someone like Andy Bechtolsheim? I guess the target audience of the article doesn't know anyone but Gates and Jobs.

Steve Wozniak is a quasi household name, but calling someone "the Polish Wozniak" doesn't quite work.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#78

Post by jojobas »

garaetjjte wrote: post #66

Officials weren't keen on these bespoke machines because there was a Comecon push to standardize on unified system based on IBM 360, with compatible peripherals manufactured in many Eastern bloc countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ES_EVM K-202 was later developed into MERA 400, which was somewhat more successful. https://mera400-pl.translate.goog/Strona_g%C5%82%C3%B3wna?_x... One of interesting things from moder…

It was incredibly expensive to have dozens of research institutes work on esoteric architectures at their pleasure. The majority of the population worked their asses of in poverty to make thousands of tanks and dozens of submarines, not entertain some computer scientists.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#79

Post by lo_zamoyski »

karaterobot wrote: post #19

> It’s believed that Karpiński paved the way for today’s common use of paging in computer memory systems. So, I didn't know anything about the K-202, so this is very interesting to me. However, are we sure that it influenced anything , given that only about 230 of them were ever made, and those were destroyed at the factory? How would knowledge of his team's innovations, let alone specific information, have leaked ou…

> Soviet Poland

Small correction and historical note: Poland, like the other USSR-aligned countries such as Czechoslovakia and Hungary, while under the oppressive thumb of the Soviet regime and the regimes they installed in those countries, were not part of the Soviet Union. So they weren't Soviet, but they most certainly were communist, or rather, socialist people's republics.

Re: Jacek Karpińśki, the computer genius the communists couldn't stand (2017)

#80

Post by lo_zamoyski »

pinewurst wrote: post #76
surfingdino wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others include Marek Holynski https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek_Ho%C5%82y%C5%84ski (co-inventor of OpenGL, told by the visiting Russian commie inspector to focus his 3d research on "serious" things like CNC machining), Stefan Kudelski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Kudelski (Nagra audio and video recorders), Staniskaw Ulam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Ulam (Manhattan Project, Monte Carlo metho…

Ulam was Jewish and there’s a difference. My grandfather was from the same area, Galicia and generation and he’d be damned if he’d self-identify as a Pole.

Your grandfather may harbor antipathy toward Poles, but he doesn't speak for Ulam. Ulam, like a number of Poles with Jewish roots, viewed himself as a Pole. Tarski is another example. Jan Brzechwa. Those in the Lvov-Warsaw school of mathematics, like Hugo Steinhaus. Etc.
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