Amateur Computeristjrh/acn/Back_Issues/Back_Issues[1988-1992]/ACN4-4.… · wages to encourage automation and result in labor reaping the bene-fits of cost saving. It is an interesting

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Summer 1992 Volume 4 No. 4

"The long memory is the most radical idea in America." Clara Sparks; From album "Don't Mourn-Organize: Songs of Labor songwriter Joe Hill."

The Impact of the Computer on Society: Two Views

Current Problems

I just finished reading theAmateur Computerist (vol. 4 no.2-3) and I am going to be thedevil's advocate with regard toyour theory about forcing highwages to encourage automation andresult in labor reaping the bene-fits of cost saving. It is aninteresting theory but I see theneed for much related discussedof how it could be implemented. Ican foresee many problems in ap-plying this theory. The major onebeing how can you force industryto pay high wages? Currently un-ions are on the wane due to theInternationalization of Industryand their ability to move plantsand to transfer jobs any place inthe world. The experiences ofGreyhound and Caterpillar re-flects the realities of our cur-rent situation. The introduction

(Continued on page 2)

Table of Contents

Impact of the Computer on Society: Two Views . . . 1Electronic Mail . . . . . . 4Letters to the Editor . . . 6Desktop Publishing . . . . . 8Computers for People: History 9TRY THIS: (Programs) . . . 11From the Shop Floor . . . . 12America and the Dollar . . 19Problem Corner . . . . . . 20Interview with Staff Member 21

The Future

If I should discuss "the fu-ture", I would take, not a 10-20year perspective, but a 200 yearperspective. I would ask myself:What is the real LONG RANGE trendin the economy, and what sort ofreal LONG RANGE target is madepossible by that? Having decidedon a 200 year perspective, Iwould use that projection as apremise for the course I wouldwant society to follow in themore near future (0-10 years). What then is the fundamentaltrend in the economy, seen fromthe perspective of 200 years? Theanswer is of course trivial: Animmense increase in productivity.And I will say: We have just seenthe start of this, what with au-tomated manufacturing, processcontrol, expert systems, and inthe not-so-near-future, Artifi-cial Intelligence. I disagreewith environmentalists sayingthat increased productivity isimpossible because of environmen-tal constraints. I agree withtheir mental alarm about the con-straints, but I think that auto-mation, robots, and so on willmake us a better society for all,at the same time REDUCING thestrain on the environment. Now comes the next point,which is not trivial at all: Whatsort of society should we strivefor in the light of the enormoustechnological potential that a

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lot of us agree on? Here is my scenario: A societywhere a small percentage of thepopulation oversee automatic pro-cesses in administration, manu-facturing and commerce. The in-dustry will be running nearlywithout human work-hours. So whatdo the other 95% do? Before Ianswer that question, somethoughts about "the meaning oflife". Why do we need industry?Is it an end in itself? (Listen-ing to politicians and industri-alists in the media, one is ledto believe that.) In my view, industry is only ameans TO GIVE PEOPLE MORE TIMEFOR WHAT THEY REALLY WOULD LIKETO DO. The remaining 95% of theworkforce in my future societywould have the following jobs:- Kindergarten teachers andnurses, 2 adults per 5 children- Teachers, in classes with lessthan 10 children in each class- Sailplane instructors, scuba-diving instructors, footballtrainers,- Teaching kids mountain-climbing- Rearing horses- Drama instructors, singing in-structors, actors, singers, musi-cians, painters, etc.- Health personnel, one doctorper 50 persons. Free hospitaliza-tion for everybody.- Researchers in anything fromflowers to chess to astronomy tohistorical masks of the SouthAmerican Indians. A very big partof the population in university-level education and research. -ecologically sound agricultureand animal husbandry, which, bythe way, may be MORE labor-inten-sive than today's industrializedattack on the environment.- Ecological managing and re-building of the world. Reforesta-tion is one important example. OK, you can see where I'm go-ing. And I would also stress:Mandatory work-hours in this so-ciety are in the range of 2 - 4hours, if they are mandatory atall. But people will be on the

job a lot more, because they willLIKE what they are doing. Noproblem. This far future scenario hasthe following consequences forshorter-term policies:- Automation is a good thing- Higher wages which lead to moreautomation is a good thing- Shorter work hours accompaniedby job-sharing is a good thing.- Less people in industry andmore people in education/healthcare/culture is a good thing.- More people employed takingcare of other people - and thiscannot and should not be "automa-tized" - is a good thing. Incountries with a publiclyfinanced health care and educa-tion, like my own country, thismeans the public sector taking aBIGGER piece of the GNP. This, inmy view, is a sign of an advancedsociety, and I therefore find thepersistent wailing from industry,finance and the political rightagainst growth in the public sec-tor totally reactionary and lack-ing any long term perspective.

Trond [email protected]

Trondheim, Norway

( Problems, from front page )of the computer has encouragedcompanies to eliminate mid man-agement and has helped industriesto cut cost of operation. How hasthis benefitted either labor orthe consumer? It appears that allmid managers are being effectedeither through loss of jobs, in-security and eventually thoseleft working will probably getlower pay. I would guess that itwill also effect the pay of alllabor. I would suggest that yournewsletter might be more meaning-ful if you would encourage dis-cussions on all aspects of ourcurrent problems. The history ofthe Sit-downers is interestingfrom a historical perspective,

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but it's important to us only ifwe can learn from this experi-ence. The situation today is muchdifferent from the days of theSit-downers. I suspect that thereis not much that can be applied. The other point that you keepprojecting is that workers shouldbe computer literate to make au-tomation practical. This is areal controversial proposal. Theattitude of industry is to keepworkers away from touching com-puter programs and/or repairingmachinery. Most companies employspecialists to do programming orto repair machinery and they(try) to discourage all othersfrom becoming involved. When Iworked in Europe I saw the re-sults of allowing GI's to messwith computer programs, as it wasoften a disaster. It is my beliefthat this too needs to be dis-cussed in depth. I believe thatworkers should be encouraged toupgrade their skills for promo-tions. I believe that only a lim-ited number of workers have theeducation or motivation to learncomputer skills. Further your comparison of theComputer Revolution with the In-dustrial Revolution needs muchfurther analysis. At the time ofthe Industrial Revolution thestandard of living was so lowthat it could not drop further.Our current standard of livingbased upon historical standardsis probably the highest in his-tory. The computer revolutioncould cause our standard of liv-ing to drop drastically. It is mybelief that any theory regardingour future direction has to beexplored in great depth. Peopletend to be very dogmatic in theirapproaches and often ignore real-ity. An excellent example of thisapproach is Socialism. It is the-oretically a better system butfrom a practical standpoint ithasn't worked. It failed becauseno realistic analysis was made ofhuman greed and no allowanceswere made to take care of this

problem. It is my feeling that if youreally want a newsletter that isdifferent, encourage the in depthexploration of the effects of theComputer Revolution on man. Wecan already see some of its ef-fects on man but many more are tocome. An analysis of anticipatedeffects are certainly in order,and what is more important isthat we speculate on how we couldeffectively have people applypressure so that the computer isused beneficially. I don't knowof any organized group who areactively looking into these prob-lems, other than the people whomhave a direct economic interestin exploiting the computer. You can say that I am de-pressed about people, but a bett-er word is cynical. From what Ican see most people are not in-terested in anything but theirimmediate self. They only getexcited when encouraged by thenewspapers and/or TV. Look at allthe noise about Congress bouncingchecks. This is only the tip ofthe iceberg and is relativelyunimportant when compared to someof the other things that our rep-resentatives have been doing.Traveling around the World atTaxpayers expense, the SavingBank scandals, the unfair taxbills, etc. Almost nobody getsexcited about these. I suspectthat Bush may even be reelected,in spite of the miserable stateof our economy. I know that there are peopleinterested in doing somethingabout improving our current situ-ation, but these are in the mi-nority. What we lack along withmore interested people is a clearanalysis of our problems andleadership to direct solutions. My analysis of the basic rea-son for the collapse of the So-viet Union is Corruption. Thepeople that started the SovietUnion were idealists. They ini-tially accomplished much in thatthey introduced education, medi-

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cal support system and an initialimprovement in the Standard ofLiving. But even from the begin-ning the opportunists took over.They became the factory manager,government official, party mem-ber, army officer, etc. Once inpower, most made every effort tomaintain their positions, bring-ing in friends, family and shun-ning people with ability and in-tegrity. This caused the eventualcollapse of the system. We haveexactly the same problems in thiscountry except for a minimalcheck and balance system. When acompany starts to lose money theysometimes replace management andanother check is the high levelfights among the power giants.Oil companies want high oilprices whereas the airline,trucking and chemical industrieswant low oil prices. With respect to Windows, Ifind it a mess to use. I havebeen playing with it but I findit difficult to learn. It isslow, erratic and the manuals andhelp menus are difficult to un-derstand. The other reason I havebeen playing with Windows is Ihave been getting some of thelatest software for Windows. Ihave MS Word, MS Works, Intermis-sion and many others. Also I re-cently installed Stacker whichdoubled the capacity of my harddisk. I find this program great.I need Windows to use this newsoftware. If you care to publish any ofmy comments you may. I believethat you can easily extract themfrom this letter. Hopefully itmight generate some discussion,although I don't feel too opti-mistic. The last letter of minewhich you published regarding theeffect of the computer on manapparently didn't generate anydiscussion.

Dave PollackSun City, ARIZONA

Electronic Mail

From: [email protected]: History Yes, I'm always interested inarticles referring to the historyof PCs. I'd greatly appreciate itif you could send me some copies.Also, the history of the AmateurComputerist is of interest to me,as I often find myself counteringideas of technological determin-ism. The Russians I deal withseem to feel that IBM waved itsmagic wand and created the per-sonal computer! Someone is putting together amultimedia history of the PC, andI'll refer him to you. I've certainly heard of Cleve-land Freenet, in my position withthe Community Memory Project. Ibelieve that we've developed thenext generation of public-accessbulletin board, which has been inservice at ten public locationsin Berkeley since 1989. We have-n't done much publicity, but thatwill soon change.

Lee FelsensteinCalifornia

From: [email protected]: Re: Computers vs FactoryClosures: 4 Years of the AmateurComputeristGreat Stuff! Makes a refreshing change toread the classical POSITIVE standdemanding more high-tech andblaming the capitalists for pre-ferring low wage speedup pol-icies! It's SO sickening readingthe usual garbage about how auto-mation costs jobs and we shouldall work harder for longer hoursto produce less just so that asystem based on "jobs" can sur-vive (and to preserve nature in-stead of conquering it ofcourse...) An old friend of mine who is"almost" on the net used to be anauto worker so I'm passing yourstuff on.

Albert LangerAustralia

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From: [email protected]: Re: Computers vs FactoryClosures: 4 Years of the AmateurComputerist Thanks for the complete issue.I just read it and really enjoyedit. I like the mixture - and es-pecially the re-capturing of the"radical subversive" history ofpersonal computing. Looking for-ward to future issues.

Albert LangerAustralia

From: Lee Hauser Got the Amateur Computeristloud and clear. I'm impressed!Especially the history of thenewsletter. You may know that weout here in Washington State area bit addled when it comes tolabor causes – we haven't beencalled the "Soviet of Washington"back in the '30s for nothing.Though I'm not personally a uniontype, the reasons for the found-ing of your newsletter warmed myheart. Anyway, back to work, thanksfor the newsletter, and I'll typeat you soon!

Lee HauserWashington

From: "More Puzzled" - 'Cause I'm Still LearningSubject:Re: The Rest Of The Story Now before I write anythingelse I would like to say that Iwas very sorry to hear about Mr.Floyd Hoke-Miller. I personallydid not know the man but I have asuspicion that I am for the les-sor for not having met him. Asselfish as this may sound, whoknows what I might have learnedif I had met him. Anyone that wasa member of the "Wobblies" andthe "famous/infamous sit-downstrike – 1937", no matter whattheir point of view, is worthtalking to. If I were a journal-ist I would have paid to inter-view him. If there weren't peoplelike him all the workers might be

in slave camps today. Before I forget this I shouldhave mentioned this comment in mylast message. In reading how theAmateur Computerist was foundedand all of you ( the initiators )should pat your self on the back.It can be very tough to get some-thing like this off the ground,let alone sustain it for fouryears. And I was not surprisedthat Ford played games with theeducational future of the work-ers. I'm not familiar with thembut hopefully they have taken adifferent approach these days.

More PuzzledOhio

From: [email protected]: Ford/Amateur Computerist I'm working on a book calledThe Age of Heretics, a history ofefforts to change corporationsfor the better over the past 20years. I saw your note about theeffort by workers to make Fordput in more computers, not less,and I'm fascinated. I saw some-thing similar in the early 1980sregarding robots. You offered to reply aboutobtaining a copy. How can I ob-tain one?Many thanks for your consider-ation.

Art KleinerOhio

From: [email protected]: Ford/Amateur Computerist Thank you. I haven't yet down-loaded the E-mail – will do sowhen I log on with a non-Telnetaccess method. I look forward toit. Book is probably a year or soaway from completion. Its scopeis big. Re: robots, I noticed whenvisiting a Ford plant in early1980s that the shop floor peoplefelt much more benevolently aboutthe robots than a casual visitor(or at least THIS casual visitor)expected.

Art KleinerOhio

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From: [email protected]: Re: Help with PlacingAmateur Computerist in FTP Site Sorry for the delayed re-sponse, I was out of town for afew days. I am still interestedin putting your newsletter in ourcollection. Please send me theASCII and WordPerfect files forthe issue that you currentlyhave. Or if they are presently onan FTP server, please tell mewhere to get them from. We'll putthem in our FTP server atworld.std.com under the subdirec-tory OBI for Online Book Initia-tive. As you get the back issuesonline, please send them too.We'd certainly like to have acomplete set. Let me know if youneed any further assistance.

Mary RiendeauSoftware Tool & Die

- Purveyors to the TradeThe World-Public Access UNIX

(617)739-0202

Letters to the Editor

(Editor's Note: We want to thankEric Lindsay, Editor of :Periph-eral, for helping us to trackdown information about theEduc-8, the Australian generalpurpose stored-program computerfor home construction which wasannounced and detailed in a se-ries of articles in the magazineElectronics Australia from August1974 to August 1975. Not only didEric's request for informationlead to this interesting letterfrom Peter Gargano, but also Ericsent us a copy of the originalfirst edition 1975 handbook forconstructing the Educ-8 (byJamieson Rowe). A special thanksto Eric and to Robert BruceKay-Sewall (who provided Ericwith the manual) and to PeterGarano for sending us the follow-ing letter.) Regarding the EDUC-8 (pro-

nounced "educate") reference byEric Lindsay in the Feb 92:Peripheral, I have a soft coverhandbook called "EDUC-8 An educa-tional microcomputer system forthe home constructor and collegestudent" by Jamieson Rowe. Mycopy is the second edition (1976)and the first edition was in1975. Over 11,000 copies of thefirst edition handbook were sold. The current address of theeditor of Electronics Australia(Jim Rowe) is - Federal Publish-ing Company, PO Box 199, Alexan-dria NSW 2015, Australia. The contents of the handbook(80 pages) were originally pub-lished in Electronics Australiaduring the period August 1974 toAugust 1975. The preface states:“..the project started out as apurely personal challenge to de-sign a small general-purpose dig-ital computer "from scratch".Cost consideration were thusquite important in the originaldesign phase...” Jim goes on to say he was ableto take advantage of the rapidlyfalling price of memory chips“...by redesigning the memorysection from 32-word capacity toa much more satisfying 256words.” Page 7 has a STOP PRESS indi-cating they received a July(1974) copy of Radio-Electronics.They had the following to say:“...Our design is not the first,then, as it transpires - we werebeaten by a few weeks!” Regarding the specificationsof the unit: “...Almost all pro-cessing is performed serially atapproximately 500kHz and 2Hz(test mode). Instruction cycletimes are constant at approxi-mately 96 microseconds and 24seconds respectively..." (that'sabout .01 MIP flat out) The unit had a PC (ProgramCounter), AC (Accumulator), MA(Memory Address register), MB(Memory Buffer register) and IR(Instruction register). The front

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panel provided access to theseregisters and memory. Power con-sumption of the basic unit was 15watts. The PCBs were single sidedwith a considerable number oflinks on the component side. After describing constructionthe later chapters introduce in-terfacing the EDUC-8 to punchedpaper tape, a Philips 60SR print-er, a full ASCII-type input key-board, teleprinters and even mag-netic tape. I have seen one of these units(briefly and a few years ago now)and if I ever see one again I'llnegotiate with the owner. Thefirst micro I ever made was alsodescribed in Electronics Austra-lia some time between August 1976and August 1977. This was theMini Scamp, a 256 byte machine (2x 2112) based on the NationalSC/MP. Other Australian micros... Some time later a self con-tained computer with integralvideo, keyboard, power supply andspeaker was designed around theZ80 and described in another Aus-tralian magazine Electronics To-day International. This computer,the MicroBee (not to be confusedwith a terminal of the same namemade by BeeHive in the US) becamea hit all over Australia and waseven exported to Sweden wheretheir education department made alarge purchase. I even becameinvolved with manufacturing asmall expansion board for theMicroBee with 256KB RAM (a mas-sive amount in the early 1980s),a disk controller and Z80 PIO andCTC. Australia was one of the firstmanufacturers of a notebook com-puter with a flip top 8 or 12line LCD screen based on theIntel 186 and running MS-DOS.This computer, originally calledthe DULMONT MAGNUM was later re-packaged for export as theKookaburra (also an Australianbird related to the Kingfisherfamily). I tried to buy one lastweekend at a trash-and-treasure

market for $20 but the seller(who obviously didn't know theunits real value) wanted $80! Looking through another maga-zine I noticed another article byJim Rowe that claims “...As faras we know this project is aworld first-the first electronicsconstruction project based on adedicated microcomputer.” Thearticle describes an ASCII-Baudottranslator using an SC/MP evalua-tion kit. It appears the originalarticle was in Electronics Aus-tralia of October 1976 but it mayhave been earlier. Does this rateas a world first? If you are interested I candredge up more facts on Austra-lian micros and if you reallywant I could get you a copy ofthe EDUC-8 handbook. It is anewsprint style, stapled publica-tion with advertisements. on theback and inside covers. It iscopyrighted and "may not be re-produced in whole or in part (..)without written permission fromthe editor-in-chief of the editorof Electronics Australia". I'mcurrently working with small com-pany that is manufacturing a386SX based PC that fits into thepalm of your hand and is designedto be part of a multi purposelaser ranging system. I don'thave an e-mail address but I'dlike to hear whether this infohas been of any use.

Peter Gargano.Aranda, Australia

(Editor's Note: The 1975 manual -i.e. the first edition - con-tained reprints of the articlesthat had been published from Au-gust 1974-August 1975. The firstarticle describing the Educ-8appears to have been printed inthe August 1974 issue ofElectronics Australia. This issuecontains the following note thatPeter referred to above: "STOP PRESS Just as this is-sue was going to press an advancecopy of the July issue of the USmagazine Radio-Electronics reach-

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ed us. In it they give details ofMark-8, a minicomputer basedaround the Intel 8008 micropro-cessor IC and 11101 memory ICs.Our design is not the first,then, as it transpires – we werebeaten by a few weeks! Ah well,such is life. Still, readers willnow have a choice of two differ-ent computer designs, each withrather different emphasis." (from Educ-8 by Jamieson Rowe,First Edition 1975) (The :Peripheral is availablefrom Eric Lindsay, 6 HillcrestAvenue, Faulconbridge, NSW, 2776,Australia. Electronic mail ad-dress: [email protected] If any reader has a copy ofthe July 1974 article printed inRadio Electronics describing theMark-8 computer, we would appre-ciate seeing a copy.)

Suggestion on Desktop Publishing

Thanks for your letter of Feb-ruary 23rd. Sure, I'd be happy tohelp you out with some sug-gestions on desktop publishingthe Amateur Computerist. Justkeep in mind that I'm not an art-ist, so don't expect miracles.(You'll probably have betterideas than I will!) As to software, I really likeVentura Publisher, but it is abit steep in price. There areactually some much cheaper waysto get output that is almost asgood. If you are starting fromscratch, you may find somethinglike Publish It! (watch your pro-nunciation) a lot cheaper andalmost as good. I originallystarted with a few other programslike Fontasy and First Publisher,but they were a disappointment.Publish It! would have worked outquite well, except that I neededthe ability to handle equationsand really long files; that's whyI move to Ventura at $800 (atthat time) instead of Publish It!

at $100. These days, of course, thereis a lot of other software thatwill do an almost-desktop-pub-lishing job, like WordPerfect orWord for Windows. As to a printer, again, if youare starting from scratch, a 4page-per-minute printer like anHP IIIP or an Oki or equivalentis nice, but an even cheaper waymay be a DeskJet from HP (I justdon't remember offhand whetherPublish It! supports it, but ifnot, then something else will).Its output is almost as good as alaser printer, though slower(about 1-2 pages per minute); butthat's not really accurate. Laserprinters slow down a lot ongraphics or when the software orcomputer driving them is slow, sothe final speed may be more orless the same. Ink Jet printerslike the DeskJet also have thedisadvantage that the ink is wa-ter soluble (though the newerDeskJet ink cartridges are betterthan the old ones in thatrespect). Which means you would-n't want to print envelopes init. But if you're going to makemore copies on a copier anyway,that may not be a problem. As to your other questions, Idon't have ready access to Inter-net, so your e-mail address won'thelp much, though I guess I couldreach you through CompuServe. Irun a BBS here, but I doubt youwant to call to New York. And yes, I'm the same PeterStark who wrote those 68000 arti-cles for Radio-Electronics. I'vebeen writing articles for years,including a series of articlesway back in the days of KilobaudMagazine (1977, I think), as wellas a number of amateur radio mag-azines. If you still have a copyof the issue that mentioned my R-E article, I'd appreciate it.

PETER STARKSMt. Kisco, New York

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Once AgainOn the Question of Censorship

(Editor’s Note: See “Censorship.”Vol 4 no 1) There they were, in all theirblack and white glory; thosewords that the Morality Censorshad deemed unfit for public view-ing. "B*******", "a******","m***********" and all the othersblared across the page, swagger-ing in consonant-filled aggres-sion. Just this once, freedom ofspeech had triumphed over thecensors. Their ideas were therefor me, the reader. I flipped the page, leavingthe entire article unread. Was this freedom of informa-tion? Yes – but the free informa-tion censored the ideas more ef-fectively than the editor's pol-icy of using asterisks to suggestthe words. In spite of all the warningsto the contrary, we really DOtend to judge "a book by itscover". Poorly chosen words, ra-cial epithets, obscenities, andoutright illiteracy can be moredevastating to an idea than thehand of an editor. Who wants towade through an article full ofmisspellings? This leaves theimpression that the writer is soilliterate that they could havenothing useful to say to us. Anymessage that includes the phrase"stupid male chauvinist pigs" isnot going to reach any man. Wordslike "kike, nigger, wetback,honky, whore" will only appeal tothose who have an axe to grindwith these groups. An editor's concern is to pre-serve and present ideas. A goodchoice of words can cause someoneto look at an idea in a more fa-vorable light. The right wordscan cause them to consider anidea that they might normallyreject. I feel that the editors made acall – that the messages therewere more important than the lan-guage and that the ideas NEEDED

to be seen. They took a standardeditorial policy of substitutingletters in words that many stillfind offensive. The words them-selves added nothing – they werethe same old tired adjectives,the limp and mindless language oftoken aggression. I think that editors have aresponsibility to the freedom ofinformation that they cherish.Correcting spelling, correctinggrammar, and yes even puttingsymbols in offensive language arethings that any good editor doesto make the ideas more present-able to a wide audience. Are the words more importantthan the ideas? In poems andsongs, sense and content can beignored for rhyme and meter. Butif the goal is to communicateideas, then a little judiciouseditorial meddling may not be ascruel as total freedom of lan-guage.

Mel White

HISTORY OF COMPUTERS

Computers for the People:A HistoryPart IV

(Continued from last issue) The Homebrew Club movement hada vision. Computer power had tobe put into the hands of the peo-ple, otherwise, they cautioned,computers would only be usedagainst the populace. A coopera-tive, critical milieu had to becreated to oppose the secrecy andexclusivity of IBM and the restof the computer establishment.Money wasn't the objective ofthese technological revolutionar-ies. Their objective was to con-tribute to the society they werepart of. One Homebrew member'smotto expressed the goal: "Let'sstand on each other's shoulders,not on each others toes." (PaulFreiberger and Michael Swain,Fire in the Valley, Berkeley,1984, p. 178)

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The Homebrew Club first met inGordon French's garage in PaloAlto. But soon the meetings grewtoo large and the club moved tothe Stanford Linear AcceleratorCenter. Meetings would attract500 to 750 people and LeeFelsenstein, who chaired themeetings, would encourage ques-tions and especially the sharingof information. The free sharing of informa-tion was a crucial component ofthese important and excitingdays. The free exchange of infor-mation was a necessity for thoseearly personal computer pioneerswho were all working in unchart-ered territory. The Homebrew club provided aplace where a movement of peoplecould gather and find the helpthey needed to solve the problemsposed by this new technology.Also, Homebrewers shared theircritiques of new products beingoffered to warn each other offalse claims or bugs they encoun-tered. Homebrew Club meetingswere also a place where the par-ticipants could share their re-ports of good products. The cul-ture developed by the Homebrewerssupported the principle of openand free exchange of ideas andinformation so achievements couldbe built on and development couldproceed in a cooperative ratherthan proprietary manner. "...Inpart due to Lee Felsenstein," theauthors of Fire in the Valleywrite, "Homebrew encouraged theconviction that computers shouldbe used for and not against peo-ple." (Ibid., p. 108) The Club developed a set ofprinciples that were argued outat meetings. One principle wasthat there should be free dissem-ination of software code and thatinformation about the internalworkings of a computer should beopen to everyone. They stood foropen architecture, and publicknowledge of the physical design,as well as an open operating sys-tem.

Most established companies,though, had the opposite view.Companies like Intel wanted nostandards set unless they wereIntel's own standards, and MITStried to hide the specificationsof the architecture of theAltair. Homebrew set up a stan-dards subcommittee to deal withthe controversy. Freiberger andSwaine describe what happenedwhen the subcommittee met: "When the subcommittee decidedto formulate standards whetherIntel liked them or not, Intelacquiesced. This was outrageouscheek. A bunch of hobbyists...had simply ignored the biggestmicrocomputer company of thattime and had faced the leadingchip manufacturer and not beenstruck by lightning." (p. 122) The authors go on to describethe process of the battle: "The committee was attemptingguerrilla design.... Tiny parame-ters and other features were dic-tated by the companies. IBM andDEC worked this way. In their waytheir method was certainly easierthan communal design. But theS-100 committee members dug intothe Roberts' [Altair 8800 archi-tecture - ed] bus, figured outhow it worked, and were scrappingit in favor of a new, independentbus open to all." (Ibid.) Freiberger and Swaine explain,"This was a populist revoltagainst the tyranny of the bigcompany, and MITS hoisted as apoor but adequate symbol of thebig company. The revolution wassucceeding." (p 123) The Homebrewers had opened upthe architecture of the machine,but something more was needed toget the computer to the masses ofthe people. People were hungryfor computers but they wanted tobe able to see what they could dowith computers themselves. To doso, they needed to be able towrite programs, they needed aversion of the BASIC computerprogramming language that wouldmake it possible for people to

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use their computers for their ownpurposes. Kemeny and Kurtz atDartmouth had developed the BASICprogramming language for theDartmouth Time Sharing System inthe 1960's. BASIC was a languagewhich was easy for beginners touse, yet it also made it possiblefor more advanced users to uti-lize the power of the computer.The version of BASIC created byPaul Allen and Bill Gates ran onthe Altair, so with their earlypersonal computer, users had ac-cess both to their own computerand to the power a programminglanguage made possible. And along with the developmentof open architecture and operat-ing system and a language, an-other component was needed in thetechnological guerrilla war. Cri-tiques that honestly evaluatedthe products being offered werecrucial in the effort to developuseful and functioning items.Freiberger and Swaine report ofhow this critical attitude wasnourished. In the Spring of 1975,Lee Felsenstein wrote articles onthe Altair for the Bay Area com-puter magazine PC. Relying oninformation he received fromtelephone conversation with EdRoberts, he wrote about theAltair. Readers of the magazine,however, who bought Altairs foundbugs when trying to use the com-puter. Their letters complainingabout the problems they encoun-tered flooded the editors of themagazine. Freiberger and Swaindescribe Lee Felsenstein's re-sponse, "In a PCC article he ti-tled `Criticism and Self-Criti-cism,' Felsenstein then apolo-gized: `I lied folks; this thinghas problems.' He detailed thecomputer's flaws and how to cor-rect them. He also began fixingAltairs for friends and PCC read-ers, working on them in his halfof the garage. Loyal to otherhobbyists and feeling guiltyabout misinforming people,Felsenstein did the work cheaply.In the process, he learned a

great deal about those earlyAltairs." (p 109 Fire) Also, Ted Nelson's ComputerLib contained concrete criticismof IBM's management practicesthat were antithetical to thefree flow of ideas needed fortechnological development.( See"The Behemoth IBM", "The GoodNews and the Bad News About IBM","Quickie History of IBM, and "TheBig Questions" "IBM's Control:The Virtual Mechanics", etc., pg52-55 of Computer Lib) Soon critiques began appearingevaluating the new products andcriticizing those practices andproducts that were dishonest andharmful to the movement. AdamOsborne's columns appearing inInterface Age to begin with andlater in Infoworld indicted com-panies that misled their custom-ers. He exposed dishonest prac-tices such as companies who usedthe money from a prematurely an-nounced product to finance theproduction and distribution oftheir products. "Silicon Valley,"write the authors of Fire in theValley," was the source of hisinformation and he called hiscolumn `From the Fountainhead'."(Ibid., p. 260)

(To be continued next issue)

TRY THIS

Faces(for IBM)

5 REM Just the Beginning!7 GOSUB 16010 PRINT "My name is happy face -see? :-)"17 GOSUB 16020 PRINT "My name is sad face -see? :-("27 GOSUB 16030 PRINT "My name is mad face -see? :-O"37 GOSUB 16040 PRINT"My name is winky face -see? ;-)"

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47 GOSUB 16050 PRINT "My name is small happy- see? :)"57 GOSUB 16060 PRINT "My name is bracket -see? :-]"67 GOSUB 16070 PRINT "My name is cry baby -see? :~-("77 GOSUB 16080 PRINT "My name is weird eye -see? =-)"87 GOSUB 16090 PRINT "My name is small weirdeye =)"97 GOSUB 160100 PRINT" happy face :-)"107 GOSUB 160110 PRINT "happy face :-)"117 GOSUB 160150 END160 FOR X = 1 TO 2500: NEXT X165 CLS166 FOR T=1 TO 900: NEXT T167 LOCATE 15,25170 RETURN

Magic Square

* The following four lines are the `obfuscated' * version of the program below. Both versions * print a magic square of odd size. The size * must be an odd number, given as the first * argument on the command line. If no argument * is given, the size will default to 1. No * argument checking is further done however. */

#if 0 /* Don't let the compiler touch this one ...*/

main(o,O0)char**O0;{int OO,O;O=--o?atoi(O0[!0]):!0;for(o=((OO=O*O)-O+!0+!0)>>!0;OO;o+=((--OO%O)?-!0:((((o-!0)%O)?O:0)+!0))-(((o-!0)%O)?O:0)){printf("\n%*d "+!!(OO%O),!0<<!0<<!0,o+=(o<!0)?O*O:0);}}

#endif

#include <stdio.h> /* Needed for the printf() func*/

/* * Below is the non-obfuscated version * of the same algorithm. */

main(argc, argv)int argc;char *argv[];{int n = 1; /* Default square size */int row; /* Loops over square */int col;int num; /* Current cell value */

if (argc > 1) /* Argument given? */

n= atoi(argv[1]); /* Grab argument */

num= (n*n-n+2)/2; /* Top left square */

for (row = 1; row <= n; row++) /* For all rows ...*/ for (col= 1; col <= n; col++) { /* For allcolumns */

printf("%d ", num); /* Print current square */

if (col != n) { /* Not on last column? */

if (num%n == 1) /* Subtract one allowed? */ num--; else /* Next diagonal */ num-= (n+1);

if (num < 1) /* Adjust for wrap around */ num+= n*n;

} else { /* Last column reached */ num++; /* Adjust for new row */ printf("\n"); }}

return 0; /* Just to be conformant */

} /* main */

If you notice carefully, this little thingyreads the command line. It wants an odd number as itssingle argument; if not present, this number willdefault to one (1). It prints a magic square of the sizegiven. In your case, since you didn't supply it withan argument, it always printed a single `1', whichis an odd sized magic square by default. Unless other implementations, this thingydoesn't need any storage proportional to the size of the magic square, i.e. no two dimensional array to storethe magic square. The algorithm works as follows:

- the number 1 to n^2 are stored in a square suchthat the sum of the all rows, columns and the twodiagonals are equal. Simple calculations show that this sumequals (n^3+n)/2

- The number in the middle position of the squareequals (n^2+1)/2

- Therefore the number in the top left positionequals (n^2+1)/2+(n-1)/2

- Observation of the magic square shows that thenext number in a row is one less than the previous,unless the previous number was 0 mod n. In this case thenext number in the row is n-1 less than the previousnumber mod n.

- the first number in the next row is 1 more thanthe last number in the previous row.

The classical way of constructing an odd sizedmagic

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square is:

- put a one in the last column of the middle row.

- repeat the following steps:

- move one position to the right and one down. Ifyou `fall off' the square: wrap around, i.e. considerthe square as an unfolded torus.

- if the cell is free, put the next number there, otherwise move one position to the left and putthe number there

- until all positions are occupied.

My implementation is a variation of the lastmethod described above, it simply eliminates the needfor an array, no more no less. Enjoy!

kind regards,Jos Horsmeier

Rotterdam, Netherlands

NEWS & VIEWSFrom the Shop Floor

I'd Hate to Be a Foremanby Floyd Hoke-Miller

A foreman I would hate to beAnd have the men look down on meAs something short of dignityWithout a conscience, heart or soul.

When every time I turned my backThere'd always be some dirty crackAbout the scruples that I lackAnd never a word to extol.

I don't like words unfit for use,Nor tongues of scorn that hates induceBut still there is a sane excuseWhen used against some mad Legree.

Who drives his men at fearful paceAs if it were a chariot raceAnd by all odds he'd save his faceAnd win the victory.

To aspire, I never can,To exploit my fellow manFor Mammon's parasitic clan;That ever lies in Luxury's lap.

That's why I wait to see the dayWhen none can rise and boastful say"I gained my lot the easy wayBy shearing the working sap."

COMMENTS FROM A CATERPILLARWORKER ON UAW-CAT STRIKE

(Editor's Note: The followingposts were part of an Open ForumDiscussion about the 5 monthstrike of UAW members againstCaterpillar Corporation which wasended when the International Un-ion ordered workers back to work.There is a Freenet Computer Bul-letin in Peoria, Illinois whereworkers, managers and other in-terested people discussed anddebated issues of the strike bothduring and after the 5 monthwalkout. We are reproducing someof the comments of a Caterpillarworker which were part of theFreenet CAT-UAW Open Forum. Theworker's viewpoint is rarelyheard in the U.S. Lines markedwith ">" are being quoted fromanother person's post in the fo-rum.)From: [email protected]: RESPECT It has been some time since Ilast visited Heartland... I grewweary of the argument I guess. Iwas also disheartened that therewere so few Cat workers availableto comment on our perspective ofthis issue. This August I will have spent19 years in the factories. Ithink the sorriest part of thisentire situation is the distrustand lack of respect that hasgrown over the last decade. Dis-trust and disrespect do not buildcooperation. I am afraid Cat'slatest antics have buried thathope for good. I know they havefor me. I could care less if Catdied tomorrow. There is no way I can explainthe feelings I had on the picketline, watching hired security"people" videotape my moves. Idid NOT feel protected. Receiving

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propaganda at my home only mademe curious where the money wascoming from for all the postage.The same with the radio, TV, andnewspaper nonsense. I was notconvinced Cat valued me. It is my perspective that mostof this conflict has been causedby Cat's callous treatment of itsemployees. There must be more toany working relationship thanmoney and benefits. Over theyears I have tried to give thecompany full measure for my em-ployment. I have come forth withmy ideas and seen things improvedbecause of them. Never again. IfI am but a physical body to bereplaced indiscriminately, thanso be it. I will be the machinethey wish to employ. I have noideas of value. I realize thefollowing analogy is somewhatcrude... but it closely parallelsthe feeling of many of Cat'shourly workers. A person, man or woman, de-sires companionship. This personhas a variety of choices, but letus say basically there are onlytwo. One can buy companionship ormutually share it... each bene-fitting from the other. One canchose to find a mate, and build alife around that decision. Toshare the good and bad, to trustand benefit from that trust. Orone can buy limited companionshipto fulfill immediate needs andwalk away with no ties or respon-sibility. It is my view that Cat-erpillar has decided to forgo thebenefit of trust and long termrelationship. Caterpillar has used myselfand fellow workers as prostitutesto be discarded. So be it.

Michael Legel

Subject: Install?

>This is a time of change. MUCH>is happening, hopefully for the>ultimate good. Much does not>SEEM good now, however, and this>perception is widespread. Rest>assured that upper management is

>aware of this feeling; they>simply do not know how to>ameliorate it and yet install>the changes that they feel must>be made if we, as a company, are>to be positioned to compete in>the future. I doubt if you are aware ofwhat this paragraph tells me.Even in an attempt of perhapshonest sympathy... you insult thepoint I try to make. "upper man-agement is aware of this feel-ing... and yet INSTALL THECHANGES that THEY feel must bemade"? I guess they are not thenaware of our feelings are they?Or they are and simply don'tthink it important enough to co-operate. I am NOT livestock, fur-niture, or machinery and have nowish to have my changes IN-STALLED. I was once PART OF thecompany. Now, I have been reducedto a number. A cost. A squiggleon a graph.

Michael Legel

Subject: Wait?...Hope?

>Nothing happens overnight.>Change creates pain, yes, but it>also can create lasting value>for all of us. This is the time>of change, and the pain - at>least some of it - is inevitable>and is felt by all.>I can only ask that you remain>open to perceive the hoped-for>benefits as they arrive, and>that you at least retain the>hope that they will arrive.>Perhaps we will see ourselves>wedded as a company again. No>one wants the "prostitute">attitude that you imply is your>only choice left. I *could* say>the same, but retain the hope.

Fool me once... shame onyou... Fool me twice?

Not a decade ago Cat insti-gated a 7 month strike that wipedme out financially, provided the

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catalyst to end my first marriageand ripped my career from me ascallously as the wings from afly. After that strike, I wasbumped from pillar to post, fromone shift to another, from oneplant to another. It took nearly5 years to let bygones be by-gones... to get on with my lifeand hope for a better day. During the ensuing years Igave up wages and benefits whiletop management continued to in-crease their percentage of wageand benefit compared to mine. Igave up a part of my COLA so thatCat could retrain all of us poorsouls they uprooted and we gotlittle or no training. I watchedthe working class numbers dwindlewhile the white collar work forceremained the same or increased. Iparticipated in ESP and other"volunteer" functions for thebetterment of Cat with no furtherrecompense to myself. I and myfellow workers endured the cut-backs and watched some of ourfriends leave for good. We madethe sacrifices. We waited. Wehoped. Still, we had nostrikes... the contracts weresettled with little conflict andthat gave us some small hope. February, 1991, Cat startedthe ad campaign humiliating itshourly employees among their com-munities, family and friends.They mailed letters, sometimes 3a week, each one worded to makeme feel guilty for wanting toshare in Cat's success. VanceSecurity showed up with theirriot gear and swaggered about thefacilities in their bloused pantsand combat bats to "protect" us.Just like they "protected" theworkers of Pittston Coal? Right. Before I ever hit the picketline, the small coal of resent-ment from years past had blazedinto pure hatred for the companyI had once been proud to work at.The final indignity was the per-manent replacement issue. Cater-pillar knowingly used us as pawnsin this ridiculous battle to re-

move the union. By what stretchof the imagination could theyever believe I and my fellowworkers would not remember theseindignities for the rest of ourlives. I meant what I said. Ihave no regard for Caterpillar.

Michael Legel

Subject: Re: Wait?...Hope?

>You say "Or they are [aware of>your feelings] and simply don't>think it important enough to>cooperate." It is only a>confusion of thought that could>cause you, in this country, to>suggest that the owners>represented by upper management>have a duty "to cooperate" with>you or with me. It is WE who>have the duty to cooperate with>THEM if we value our positions.

Interesting concept of theword "cooperate". Your view man-dates that management is alwayscorrect by virtue of simply stat-ing "Make it so." My view is onewhere the flow of information andresponsibility move in all direc-tions... each one advising inthose areas at which they aremost competent and decisions made

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based upon the collective knowl-edge of all involved. Your atti-tude seems to reflect that of thegreater Caterpillar mind-set.Your employees are simply employ-ees who have no stake in whatdecisions are made. Yet you ran-kle at our deserved displeasurein this arrangement. I don'tthink it is a "duty" for managersto cooperate, but it would seemto be common sense to me. I cer-tainly don't see what Caterpillarhas gained by the current way ofgoing about it.

>I am sorry you feel the way you>do. I can only say that *I* feel>that you have been sold a bill>of goods by the union leadership>which *claims* to represent you>while, in reality, only>representing itself and their>own continuance.>You certainly have no>understanding at all of what>management has suffered during>these years; a lack of>understanding that I *know* has>been fostered by union>misrepresentations. Based on>this, I strongly suggest you>reexamine your thinking as to>what factors *caused* these two>long strikes.

An another common thread of PRsound bites. The Detroit Unionthis and the Detroit Union that.I was not quoting the union, butmy own personal observations overthe course of nearly 2 decades. Ido have a mind and am fully capa-ble of independent thought pro-cess. My identity is no more de-termined by the union I belong tothan the company I work for. Iget rather tired of being toldwho is leading me where. I makemy own decisions based upon whatI want in life and what price Iam willing to pay to attain thosewants. I will admit you broughtsomething to my attention I wasnot aware of: The suffering ofmanagement? How many thousand inthe exempt payroll have been in-

definitely laid off?

>You also say that the ad and>mail campaign made you feel>guilty for wanting to share in>Cat's success. How sad. You felt>guilty for wanting to share what>was not in being. You easily>forget: we have been losing>money. Hardly success.>Potential, yes; success, no.

My statement was worded ex-actly as follows:"They mailed letters, sometimes 3a week, each one worded to makeme feel guilty for wanting toshare in Cat's success." Do notconstrue that the cleverly wordedpsycho babble sent to my homemade me feel guilty. I simplyrecognized the wording was de-signed to induce guilt, to con-vince me I should be utterlygrateful for any tidbit Cat mightdeign to throw my way. I noticeyou and Caterpillar use the wordWE in an inclusive sense onlywhen it suits you. If WE aren'tmaking profits, why don't WE sac-rifice equally and which side ofthe WE made the unprofitable de-cisions?

Michael Legel

Subject: Training

>For example, you gave up part of>your COLA. Management gave it>all up. YOU received little or>no retraining. Perhaps not, or>perhaps you did not recognize it>all. I am in possession of>sufficient data to know a whole>lot of it went on. Question: Did>you remain on the same job all>of those years, running the same>machine? You inferred you did>not. If there was change, SOME>retraining must have gone on for>you to become proficient at the>new one. Each time. Each time,>SOMEONE took valuable time to>show you the ropes.

I'm sure you have data thatshows time was charged against

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accounts for training purposes.What is not obvious by that datais the quality and usefulness ofthe training. By and large, Cat-erpillar shop training falls intoone of 3 categories: Hourly em-ployees training other hourlyemployees in the jobs they areabout to leave. Training sessionspurchased along with new equip-ment from the equipment maker orretailer. Classroom type instruc-tion from Caterpillar staff per-sonnel. Over the years I have usuallybeen "trained" by the man I wasreplacing. I was allowed at mosttwo weeks to absorb whatever in-formation the person was willingto share with me. If the man wasbeing promoted, I got a fair"break in". If he had just beenlaid off, I was on my own. He wasnot too interested in trainingthe person taking his job fromhim. At best, this type of train-ing is limited to the skills ofthe replaced person and if movesare made within months of eachother, there are only a fewmonths skills developed to passon. No continuity. No training.Factory training can be helpfulif the purchased machinery hasnot been altered beyond the in-structors experience. Often timesCaterpillar has need of special-ized machinery for which there isno solid experience to trainfrom. There are even times theinstructor is dubious about whatit is that we are trying to dowith the machine. So, we alllearn together if we learn any-thing at all. Again, a learningprocess; but no "training".Classroom instruction, by andlarge, is useless. The majorityare taught by highly educatedpeople with lots of book knowl-edge and little or no actual shopexperience. There is no "handson" training and most of us con-sider it a waste of time. Theother type is the coolant ortooling "salesman" and these"training sessions" usually

amount to hour long commercialsrather than actual useful knowl-edge. The most important factor tokeep in mind about all of this isthat it is not the trainer who isresponsible for results. It isthe trainee. He is expected toquickly adapt and start producingor he risks downgrade. He there-fore must train himself by exper-imentation or find a mentor whowill take time from his own du-ties to help. Unfortunately, man-agement personnel often don'teven know how to turn the machineon and are of no help at all.They just want results. Right-fully so, as they are not in-structors either and have beencharged with producing finishedparts. They may sympathize, butthey won't put their neck in anoose if you have problems. Cat-erpillar is in desperate need ofan organized, effective trainingsystem with competent personnelwho can provide the continuitynecessary in training new person-nel or developing new processes.The present "pass it on down"system is antiquated and ineffec-tual with the fast pace of cur-rent changes. It should not bethe responsibility of the lowestrung on the ladder to insure ade-quate training. Especially whenhe is contributing monetarily tothe training he expected toget... and didn't. It was ourbelief that Cat intended to im-prove the system. It has not im-proved.

Michael Legel

Subject: RE: Training

>NO ONE TRAINED ME! When I did>get a job, I had to learn>another new skill set. I>LEARNED. NO ONE TRAINED ME! Why>do you people with a high school>degree and/or a few courses at>ICC, or an associate's degree,>think it is your GOD given right>to be trained at someone else's>expense? I PAID FOR MY TRAINING

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>IN $ and IN TIME. You are not>special because you CHOSE not to>continue YOUR OWN TRAINING. Stop>wining, take charge of your own>life.

The context of the trainingissue was in regard to theworker's agreement to forgo anamount of hourly wage. This moneywas placed in a training fund forour benefit. We do not expectsomething for nothing. Every hourwe work, an amount of money isput into this fund rather thaninto our paycheck. I did not denythat a certain amount of trainingis ongoing, but that it was notas applicable as it could be. Iwas then informed I was not in-telligent enough to realize whenI was being trained, so I triedto explain what Caterpillartraining entails. I don't have torecognize it because I am told onthese occasions so I will chargemy time to the proper timekeepingaccount. Again, the workers arepaying a significant amount fortraining which they are not sat-isfied with.

>No one has to train you. If you>are being paid, it is your>responsibility to earn your>wages. Just do it. Act grown up>and take responsibility for your>own life.

The theme of your message as-sumes that anyone can walk up andrun a complex machining centerwithout training. This is no moretrue than if I were to state Icould do your job without train-ing. If a person chose to attainthis experience independently, Idon't know where it would bedone. Caterpillar is the onlyplace I know where one can learnto machine the large and complexparts of construction The workers of Caterpillar arenot as ignorant as people thinkthey are. This stereotype is aninjustice to them. Most are good,hardworking people who have no

wish to be placed in this spot-light.

Michael Legel

Subject: Options I had an incident recently atwork that might highlight my dif-ference with Caterpillar's viewof "cooperation". Another worker and I were toldwe were to "hand cut clearances"on some noise abatement panels.These panels were about the sizeof the average card table top andwere made of a plastic and foammaterial. We were taken to anopen area in the middle of theshop where the night shift hadalready been cutting on thesepanels. There were two fans aimedat the work table. There was afine layer of dust all around thearea. My first question was,"What is this material". My fore-man replied he did not know. Iasked him if it was appropriatethat the dust be allowed to con-taminate the air and was it ahazard. To his credit he didagree that we should do the workunder an exhaust fan and directedus to move to such an area. Hetold us to get to work and hewould get answers from the SafetyDept. I again told him I wouldnot feel comfortable working withthe material until I knew what itwas I was working with. He becameangry and said, "You know youroptions!" I asked him what thoseoptions were and he stated Icould go to work as ordered or gohome. Fortunately, others in thearea convinced him that it wasnot right to force us to workwith possibly hazardous materialwithout the proper precautions.Without their support I was lia-ble for disciplinary action for"insubordination". A short whilelater, my foreman brought thebuilding manager with him as wellas the safety personnel to informus of the material's compositionand what precautions were re-quired to work with it. He con-tinued to be confrontational and

Page 19

accused me of not being "coopera-tive". I reminded him that it wasnot I that had made any ultima-tums or rash statements. It wasnot I that had lost my temper andallowed it to rule. He immedi-ately tried to apologize for los-ing his temper and was visiblyconcerned that I had brought thisup in front of his boss. His bossfelt that the apology was suffi-cient. Had I lost my temper andtreated him with such disrespect,I could have apologized all theway out the door for what good itwould have done me. The doublestandard is alive and well atCaterpillar. If disciplinary ac-tion is warranted for one, it iswarranted for another for thesame offense. This foreman nowknows that he can lose his tem-per, make ultimatums etc. andfear no reprisal for these nega-tive traits.

Michael Legel

OPEN ACCESS

(Editor's Note: We welcome viewsfrom the shop floor on all sub-jects facing workers and we in-vite opposing views.)

America And The DollarBy: Tim Hendrickson

The Symbol of Freedom we dis-play in our Country is sometimesnot so easy to understand for theindividual who can't find a job.We are tied to the downfall of ananchor sinking slowly, then fast-er as the weight defeats thebuoyancy of the water trying tohold it up. We the people of theUnited States of America havefound ourselves without thatbuoyancy to defeat the weight ofthe High Tax Dollar spending ofCongress, the increase in weightof higher insurance rates, Doc-tors who see only a Dollar walkthrough their office doors, and

not the patient. The past sixtyyears of Cancer study has pro-duced very little in the cure forit. But you only have to stop andthink, ...if they find the curesfor the Cancer? What happens thento the millions of dollars forthe treatment of cancer patients?We see the Industries increasingthe price of the product, withoutan increase to the workers. Theweight is heavier everyday. Howmuch longer can we stay afloat?Water (The people of this Coun-try) the stream is drying up af-ter five hundred years. We thepeople cannot support the weightof the anchor much longer. Theaverage wage earner pays more intaxes, than most of the rich.This country was not founded onthe backs of the rich, but theworking people. Once the waterhas lost its buoyancy, nothingwill float. Not even a check!....The greed for the dollar is whenmen go beyond the limits of rea-son. When they fail to realizethat dollars are made for therich by the sweat of the workingman's back. Nothing is gainedwithout effort. And who putsforth the effort? The Dollar... it means morethan friendship, or a helpinghand. More than the correct diag-nosis from a doctor, or the truthabout the mechanics of your car.More than honest government,city, state, or federal... espe-cially when they use our tax dol-lars to build factories, andbusinesses in foreign countriesfor the super rich. Just for the Dollar we charge200% and higher for health care,and medicine for the elderly andpoor. Just for the Dollar, wesuck the oil out of the ground,and pollute the water and air.Just for the Dollar, we buildnuclear plants that cost 10 to 20times more than hydro-electricdams, that won't produce nuclearwaste. Just for the Dollar, weflood our country with foreign

Page 20

goods produced by slave childlabor to make the rich richer.Just for the Dollar, we drown oursociety in drugs, that has onlyone end. Just for the Dollar, wesell our talents, and technologyto other countries, to ensurethat our children and grandchil-dren will not enjoy the same lifestyle we have. Just for the Dol-lar, we sold our amber waves ofgrain, and tore down our purplemountains of majesty, just forthe ore, and minerals beneaththem. Just for the Dollar, wecovered our fruited plains withhighways, concrete, and rustedsteel. Just for the Dollar, wesee our seas of shining oilslicks to oil slicks... Just fora Dollar, we'll sell America...Just for a Dollar... Just for aDollar....

Problem Corner

(Editor's Note: See vol.4 no. 2-3, "Puzzled")

From: More PuzzledSubject: Please Send This To Puz-zled

Here is the best answer I haveseen to the problem that"Puzzled" is having with highdensity drives and their abilityto read DD and HD type of floppydisks. As a matter of fact when Iposted this question the firsttime I was sure that the personwho provides this answer was go-ing to do so but as you read fur-ther you will see why he chosenot to. I have seen answers toother questions posted by himbefore and I believe him to beone of the best. (Just my opin-ion) By the way you were right, theother answers did not quite coverthe problem "Puzzled" was having.Hope this is of some help:

To: Frederick O. Jacobson

Subject: Sorry To Trouble You But I hope you don't mind my ask-ing you for just a little bit ofhelp. If you are busy and unableto answer this, no offense taken. Here's what happened. I postedthe following on the Q & A sec-tion of the " IBM-PC SIG: “I was reading The AmateurComputerist and I saw this ques-tion and would like to know theanswer if you have some time toanswer it.” First, here's the question: "A reader had upgraded theirXT computer by installing highdensity floppy drives in bothbays. When he/she puts 360KB or720KB diskettes into the drivesthe computer will not read themunless it is rebooted. And ifhe/she does reboot and gets theircomputer to successfully read the360KB or the 720KB diskette, theythen have to reboot the computerbefore it will read a high den-sity disk." (I did a lot of para-phrasing here.) Now, I ask whether one couldset the parameters for theirfloppy drives to read both highdensity and double density disks?I'm sure I saw an answer con-tained in articles 1896-1898, and1903 that indicated a user couldset one of the drives to formatHD and DD disks . Presuming thisis possible, then that driveshould also be able to read bothtypes of disks or have I over-looked something here? Thanks, More Puzzled Now what would be the correctsyntax that would instruct theuser's computer drives ( both ofthem , I think this possible) toread both type of disks? Any help would be greatly ap-preciated. Thanks Again, More Puzzled

From: Frederick O. JacobsonSubject: RE: Sorry To Trouble YouBut I saw that post when it ap-peared in the IBM SIG and de-clined to answer it because I

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wasn't certain my answer would becorrect. What follows is my bestopinion, but that doesn't mean itis necessarily correct. While I do installations likethe one mentioned, I have neverrun into the problem described. In the case of the troublesomecomputer, I believe the installa-tion must have been defective. A HD drive, whether 1.2 or1.44 meg, should read DD diskswithout any fuss. A 1.2 Meg driveshould format a 360KB disk byusing the syntax "Format A: /4"(without the quotation marks ofcourse). I'm not positive of thesyntax to format a 720KB disk ina 1.44 Meg drive(never had theoccasion to do it), but I presume"Format A: /2" or something likethat should do it. A HD drive is not intended tomodify DD disks which alreadyhave data on them. If one has aDD disk which already has data onit, he should treat that disk ina "read only" manner. If youwrite to a DD disk that has ex-isting data on it, a 360KB or720KB drive will never again beable to read it. Think about it.The width of the track producedby a HD drive is more narrow thanthat produced by a DD drive.Thus, if you overwrite data al-ready on such a disk, you do notoverwrite the entire width of thetrack. When a DD drive attemptsto read it, the drive sees partof the old data and part of thenew data. Similarly, because ofeven very slight difference inalignment between HD drives, asecond HD drive probably willalso receive part old data andpart new data. The only reasons to read orwrite to a DD disk with a HDdrive are (1) To put a program ona hard disk which was furnishedon DD disks, and (2) To take dataoff a hard drive with a HD driveso it can be read by a DD drive,such as frequently happens whenone has a 386 computer at theoffice and an XT at home.

Now then:* A HD drive should *never* beused to *modify* data on a DDdisk. If you do, chances arepretty good that *no* drive willbe able to read the DD disk -perhaps not even the drive thatwas used to modify it.* If you must use a HD drive towrite to a DD disk, you must*never* use a DD disk that has*ever* been written to before. Inother words, you must use a *new*disk, *never* a previously useddisk. If you attempt to format apreviously used disk, the HD diskis incapable of performing thetask. Sections of tracks thatwere written with a DD disk willnot be overwritten by the format,and spurious data will remain onthe disk. This spurious data willprevent the disk from being reli-able – perhaps even in the HDdrive you used to format it. I have heard of *many* HDdrives that will not format 360KBdisks correctly. I don't know thereason for that, because I havenever been asked to correct aproblem like that. When I installa HD disk, I *always* check it tobe sure it will read a DD disk.Perhaps my installations succeedbecause I know how to set thejumpers on the cards and drives.Not all service people know that,by any means. Probably jumpers were po-sitioned incorrectly on the con-troller card, floppy drives, orboth. Or it may be a quirk in thespecific ROMs in the computer.Keep in mind that the XT classmachine wasn't designed to use HDdrives; those are aftermarketdevices. Please remember that the in-formation in this answer is par-tially from knowledge and part-ially from speculation. It maynot be 100% accurate.

Fred Jacobson

(Editor’s Note: As a rule ofthumb – high density drivesshould not be used to write data

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to double density disks to beread by double density drives.Remember, what works in one situ-ation does not work in every sit-uation. So if it does work, good,but remember it is not necessar-ily guaranteed to work. Generallythere are fewer problems withnewer equipment.)

Interview with Staff Memberon the Occasion of the 10thAnniversary of the Personal

Computer

Part II

(Editor's Note: This concludesthe interview begun in vol 4 no.2. What started primarily as aninterview, which was printed asPart I, developed into more of afree form discussion about thepresent and future of computers.)

Ronda: Do you think there areany lessons from what is goingon? Michael: Well, the Timex/Sinclair Commodore agreement wasproof that the best choice is notalways for the best. The bestproduct does not always end upbeing marketed or sold. Thatseems true of many things in thiscapitalist world. Sony's Betavideo system was technologicallymore superior to the current VHSstandard. I don't know if thereis a lesson to draw or not. Asimilar problem is occurring withcomputer magazines. In particularI am thinking of: Popular Comput-ing, Family Computing, PC Comput-ing, Creative Computing, and Com-pute. Most of the magazines havechanged their priorities from anemphasis on hobbyist or home us-ers to business. Popular Comput-ing disappeared shortly afterchanging its name to BusinessComputing. The same thing hap-pened with Family Computing afterit changed its name and emphasisto Home and Office Computing.

Unfortunately PC Computing isfollowing the same path. PC Com-puting started out as an alterna-tive to other magazines such asPC Magazine and PC for the homeor hobbyist crowd in the PC com-munity. It had reviews of gamesand broader articles, while beinga smidgen less technical and com-pletely unconnected to a businesspoint of view. The subtitle isnow "The magazine for BusinessComputing Experts." Readers haverecognized the change and writtenletters to the editor to commentand complain. As for other exam-ples, Creative Computing vanishedand Compute compressed down toone magazine from what was four.However, Commodore 64s stillsell, and that is a viable commu-nity. I guess PCs are coming homefrom the office, but that doesn'tmean they are only used for busi-ness at home. A whole communityseems to be left unserviced bythis trend in computer magazines.True, computer gaming magazinesexist, but home computers areused for much more than justplaying games. One problem isthat PCs are not particularlygetting cheaper. Any decrease inprice has more or less been inci-dental to the increase in power.The 386s cost today what the 286cost yesterday. But there arestill no really affordable com-puters in the $100 to $200 range.This is sad, because the computeris not as affordable as it shouldbe. Thus, personal computers arestill not a normal part of mosthouseholds which was the realgoal of the personal computerrevolution. While most homes havebeen affected by the arrival ofmicroprocessors in many home ap-pliances, the Personal Computeritself is not yet a home appli-ance. The general recent trendof computer development is aimedat business, as opposed to thepeople. Not for the majority, butfor the minority. It's like whatIBM did for the mainframe andother mainframe manufacturers in

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the '50s, '60s and '70s. Themainframe then was only afford-able by the biggest of the bigcompanies or the large educa-tional institution. The differ-ence today is that small businesscan afford computers, but stillonly businesses. Computers aremarketed as for businesses andentrepreneurs, and not for theaverage person at home, or forthe majority of the people. Theradical push of the personal com-puter movement in the mid to late'70s was to make the computeravailable to everyone, and notjust accessible to Fortune 500companies. True, these days com-puters are much more affordablethan 20 years ago, but the gen-eral movement in the personalcomputer world seems opposed toits roots. Ronda: How so? Michael: IBM exemplifies thismovement with the release oftheir PS/2 line. These computershave a proprietary bus. IBMchanged the name away from per-sonal computer to personal system2 which is more like the main-frame names. It made it lessfriendly in that sense. Ronda: Are you optimistic?Pessimistic? What do you thinkwill be the future with comput-ers? With you and computers? Michael: Well by going away toschool I'll gain more access towhat's called the Internet, thebig net that exists, the connec-tion of computers across thiscountry and across the world. Yougain more access when you go intoan educational community. I'moptimistic because of that. I'llhave to manage that as part of mytime. Businesses and educationare involved in that. It's harderif you live at home to have ac-cess to it. (Editor's Note: Homeaccess is more available now,than it was a year ago when thisinterview was done.) Somehow youneed something powerful enough tohook into. It's not quite fullyopen. If you live near an educa-

tional community you can gainaccess to it. I have and you can.Our connection is MichNet. Sothat will be broadening. Thatwill be a connection with therest of the world computerwise,but it's not quite just the com-puter. So that's encouraging. Somehow they are working onbuilding things smaller and moreminuscule but not quite price-wise. The computers aren't quitelike the microwave and the VCR.Home appliances started out ex-pensive but there are now so manydifferent companies making themthat they have come down in priceso they are affordable. As I saidbefore computer performance in-creased but it doesn't come downin price. Actually, its going tobe a stretch to buy a computerfor myself, but I wouldn't havebeen able to buy one last year.What used to be $2000 is now$1000 or coming closer to $1000. Ronda: Do you think there hasbeen some kind of revolution withthe computers? Do you think therehas been a computer revolution? Michael: Well, there is thepersonal computer. If it was upto the big companies, therewouldn't have been one. As I saidthe corporate trend is reaction-ary. Ronda: Do you think there'sbeen a computer revolution, Bill? Bill: What do you mean by acomputer revolution? Ronda: That something funda-mental has changed because of thecomputer. Bill: Fundamental? Ronda: Or something substan-tial that you see at work? Bill: We're using computersmore. We've got IBM 486 computerson the shop floor. Michael: But what do you usethem for? Bill: For altering and trans-ferring programs to our CNC ma-chining center. We got rid of theWestinghouse computer in the com-puter room and you can downloadmore files into the 486 computer.

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It has all our files already. Itwon't hold us up when we are run-ning the machine. Ronda: But the computer isn'tbeing used to run a machine? Bill: No it's not to run amachine directly. You have othercomputers for that. Michael: So the computers arelike terminals? Bill: It's like a database.But you can edit and change thedata if you need to. Ronda: Are most people com-fortable with them. Or is it thatif people don't have home comput-ers its harder to use them? Bill: Well they have menusinstead of working with DOS. Itjust takes a F[unction] key andthat is it. We finally got a man-ual for it. The editor is diffi-cult to work with. They're stillworking on a new editor.... Ronda: Remember they weretalking about the workerless fac-tory in the last 7 or 8 years. Mysense is that hasn't come topass. Bill: Well, there are a lotless people working in my shop.They're standardizing everythingso there's less skill involved inputting dies together. Ronda: But the computer hasn'tcut the people out or caused pro-blems? Bill: No. Ronda: So do you think there'sbeen some kind of computer revo-lution in the last 10 or 15years? That something substantialhas happened to change. Bill: Society? Michael: Well a lot of thingshave computer chips in them now.All your household applianceshave them from the TV set on. Bill: Cars have them. Michael: Cars have them now sosociety has been changed by theintroduction of them. The main-frame computer didn't use pro-cessing chips. It took buildingswith floors to house those com-puters. But now, the personalcomputer is the achievement of

the trend of miniaturization thatcame in the 1950s. Bill: More like evolution,right. You got chips in TV's now.You got picture-in-picture, notrevolution, not a substantialchange. Michael: Well, there was theminiaturization after WWII but itdidn't hit computers then. Com-puters were still the great bigmainframes that used the vacuumtubes. Then came the transistor,the microprocessor, and the inte-grated circuit. But they weren'treally utilized with the main-frames. Or if they were, insteadof a whole floor, it was a room.But it wasn't down to a singlechip which now exists and whichis constantly getting smaller.They think they're reaching thebounds actually. Now people arespeculating that the silicon chiphas reached its physical speedand size limits and a new mate-rial needs to be used, like chem-ical or biological materials in-stead of electronic. But I feelif it had not been for the per-sonal computer revolution, therewouldn't be such use of process-ing chips and use of computingtechnology involved in so manythings in our daily lives. Ronda: But I feel the substan-tial question is are they beingused to produce more with lesslabor? I think they are beingused more as consumer goods. Butit doesn't sound like they'vemade a change, a fundamentalchange in the way things are pro-duced. For example, at the begin-ning of the Industrial Revolutionpeople worked in their homes.Then people were brought into thefactories to work together. Therewas an increasing division oflabor, and then machines wereintroduced and people operatedthe machines. Then machines wereused to operate other machines. It doesn't seem as if the com-puter led to a similar kind ofchange in industrial production.It doesn't seem that computers

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are widely used to producethings. It seems the computer hasbeen used for paperwork but notfor producing goods. Bill: It takes longer to get acomputer to do something than itdoes a machine. They are probablyworking on that stuff too. Michael: But actually there'ssomething called CAD/CAM or Com-puter Aided Design and Manufac-turing. But then there's some-thing called CIM which I did astudy on and it seemed like itwas trying to steal the computerand give it to management whichwas a top down design and not abottom up design. When I readabout it two years ago it seemeda flop. It was trying to stealthe computers from the peoplerather than using the computersto help the manufacturing pro-cess. But I don't know what yourexperience has been with CIM. Ronda: But there was also abig push to lower wages and havepeople work a lot of overtime.And I thought that got in the wayof using the computer to makethings more efficient. Bill: You also had interna-tional competition too. Thirdworld countries have cheaper la-bor. So we had to compete withthem. So that's one reason whythe lower wages. Ronda: But you can never com-pete with the cheapest country,and in fact the story of produc-tion is that the more advancedthe technology the less laborthat goes into producing some-thing, the cheaper it can be soldfor. Somehow the whole stresstrying to compete with cheapercountries was a backwards trend.The price of things is very highbecause hand labor is very expen-sive. So in this country we hadthe ability to make productionmore efficient, that's the storyof how cars have gotten cheaper,how microwaves have gotten cheap-er, how air conditioners havegotten cheaper because there weremore advanced technologies, not

because you found someone abroadto work for cheaper wages. Withcheaper wages the price of goodsstays high. There is a need formore public discussion over howcomputers can be used to changeindustrial production. There wasa fight with the corporate worldover what would happen with com-puters and people had to chal-lenge the corporate barrage ofwage cuts and longer hours whichimpede automation. There are ex-amples of countries where ad-vanced technology that was avail-able was never used in productionbecause workers' wages were solow or their hours so long thatit was not cost efficient to putin the new machine. So that coun-try remained technologicallybackward. The story of the devel-opment of technology is that themore advanced technology some-where replaces the lower wagebackward technology somewhereelse, not that goods made by lowwage workers replace goods madewith less labor and more effici-ently by machines. But workershave to organize to prevent thewage cuts and increased hoursthat impede the introduction ofnew technology. Somehow the cor-porate attack on workers and un-ions has led to people lookingbackward, not keeping our eye onhow to go forward. Ronda: Any final words? Michael: Even though I havedecided to go to Columbia Univer-sity in NYC instead of the Uni-versity of Michigan, I am opti-mistic. Columbia is less com-puter-oriented than the Univer-sity of Michigan, but Columbiaseems better connected to theeducational and academic computernetworks. But Michigan for mewould have been a better computerschool. Columbia has more of itscomputer roots in the past whileMichigan has more in the future.There are a couple of centersopening up and there is, at Co-lumbia, the State Center for Com-puting Research. But it's not as

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obvious as Michigan how involvedit is with computers. I am sortof pessimistic, because with theage of the computer industry, itseems to have receded. But it'sprobably just a cycle. Ronda: No, it's a fight. Youhave to figure out how to take itup. The personal computer caughtpeople by surprise when it spreadso quickly and so substantially.People now have to evaluate whathas happened. I feel the lessonis you can't trust the businessworld of large corporations todevelop computers and computertechnology. Big corporationscan't be coddled by government,the press, etc. and encouraged tofreeze the development of tech-nology or to go backwards to handlabor as they have done in manyinstances. The machine is a ma-chine for society. It was a mis-take to have trusted the corpo-rate world to develop it. Insteadthe corporate world must be regu-lated and limited in its effortsto impede the development oftechnology. That's what anti-trust legislation originally ac-complished. The personal computerwas created while there was aU.S. govt. anti-trust suit onagainst IBM which kept it frominterfering with the developmentof the personal computer. Onceagain there is a need for some-thing independent of the corpo-rate world, and there is a needfor regulations and limitationson the corporate world so thattheir narrow self interest isprevented from interfering withsocial and technological develop-ment. Michael: You need a new HenryFord for the Computer world. Ronda: No, you need another“Computers for the People” move-ment. Michael: No, again. Bill: My niece is going to goto Michigan State and she's notgoing to get a computer. She'sgoing to get a word processor.You have a screen, keyboard, and

a printer all in one unit. Thatsuits her. Michael: But its not compati-ble with anything other than an-other wordprocessor of the sametype. Bill: There are some that havea floppy disk. Ronda: But it's sad the com-puters aren't cheap with a cheap-er printer too. Bill: Well it’s a letter-qual-ity printer, she's not going tobe doing graphics. Ronda: I thought John Kemenyonce predicted that there wouldbe computers used in the schoolsfor wondrous things. But now heis disappointed that that has nothappened. Bill: One of the problems issoftware. There aren't enoughsoftware developers to write pro-grams people need. To get theminvolved. Michael: Its not just softwaredevelopers, its ideas. People arenot creating new ideas but merelycopying old ideas. Ronda: But I thought thatthere was the discouragement,when people were told "Peopledon't need to learn to program."Michael learned to program and itwas a good thing he learned toprogram. Instead of saying it’s agood thing to learn a little pro-gramming it was said you don'tneed programming. So it seemsthat there has been a lot ofpressure to keep people away fromutilizing computers and discour-aging them instead. Michael: I left out that Iknow a little MS-DOS batch lan-guage, a little C, and a littleForth. I did very little in As-sembler. Bill: Are you going to takecomputer classes in collage. Michael: I don't know if I'llhave time. Ronda: To sum up, it seems itis as if this period is like theperiod in France before theFrench Revolution. Then there wasthe basis to have capitalism, but

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you had the feudal lords and theKing holding society back. Youhad a Monarchy. There was a needfor the French Revolution to getrid of the Monarchy and the Aris-tocracy and the feudal socialforms and laws that they kept inplace. They prevented the reformsthat were needed to develop largescale production in France. Theproblem we have today seems simi-lar. Big companies are discourag-ing investment in new technologylike computers because such in-vestment will lower their rate ofprofit. There is a need to getrid of this fetter so that tech-nology can be encouraged and de-veloped.

SUPPLEMENT on USENET NEWS

The Amateur Computerist willpublish a Supplement on UsenetNews in Fall, 1992. It will con-tain articles about telecommuni-cations and the development andimportance of Usenet News. TheSupplement will be available inboth electronic and print format.

The Editors

Documents

Amateur Computeristjrh/acn/Back_Issues/Back_Issues[1988-1992]/ACN4-4.… · wages to encourage automation and result in labor reaping the bene-fits of cost saving. It is an interesting