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| ▲ | stickfigure 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Selling weapons to people who would use them against you is stupid. | | | |
| ▲ | spwa4 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No ... Russia's communist government rejected access to computers and their own version of the internet for fear of dissent ... If you were working in military research, you got access to western computers. Academics, generally no. Companies, never. Even party members couldn't get access. So no this is yet another victim of the priorities of communism: priority #1 is preventing dissent. And I hope you do at least understand why that means "no computers, and certainly no networks". | | |
| ▲ | azov 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not sure what you mean by "their own version of internet", but access to any means of trans-border communication was indeed restricted. As to computers - it's not like you could walk into a store and buy one, they simply didn't produce them in quantity (central planning economy took a while to recognize that need). But if you could find one, access was not particularly restricted. You could also build a simple home computer yourself if you were into electronics. Schematics were published in hobby magazines and it was a cool thing to do, not something frowned upon by authorities. | |
| ▲ | orbital-decay 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That's complete nonsense detached from reality. For the reference, I was a kid during the Soviet personal computing boom in the 80s, and it was the reason I got interested in electronics and computers at all. There was a huge push since the 60s, and computers were everywhere in the 80s, just not readily available to private owners due to the incapability of producing enough (you needed connections, not just money) and being expensive as hell. | | |
| ▲ | braincat31415 9 minutes ago | parent [-] | | "computers were everywhere in the 80s, just not readily available to private owners" Agreed on that, and access to a computer system, e.g ES mainframe or SM family was not a problem for people who wanted it. I was in high school in mid-80s. I found a fortran book in the library, and it took me very little time to get access to the university-owned SM-1420, RSX-11, and a fortran compiler. That same lab ran free programming classes in the evening with faculty volunteers. |
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| ▲ | braincat31415 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Regarding computers, yes and no. I don't think fear of dissent played any role, but rather the availability of western equipment.
For example, SM-4 and SM-1420 machines were quite common in the academic institutions in mid-80s. These were clones of pdp-11/45, which means about 10 years gap in computer tech. | | |
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