Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 07:43:19 01/26/03
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On January 26, 2003 at 08:48:37, pavel wrote: >On January 25, 2003 at 19:01:20, Robert Hyatt wrote: > > >> >> >>I think that can be traced back to Ken Thompson. In the early 1980's he >>was on his way to Moscow to give a "Belle" demo there at the Institute for >>Control Science, after an invitation by Donskoy. Belle, as you may know, had >>a built-in PDP-11-70, plus a bunch of chess boards based on simple PLA chips >>that were available anywhere. However, there was a definite export limit on >>high-technology, and for reasons unknown to anybody, U.S. customs siezed the >>machine as it was ready to be loaded on the plane to Moscow. After a lot of >>haggling, they said "you can't take this out of the US, it is valuable >>technology that could be used in war-time against us." Ken responded, "sure >>it could be used in a war, you could drop it out of a plane and you _might_ >>get lucky and hit someone..." >> >>:) > > >It goes on to show that programmers have more than just few things in common. >Sense of Humor, for one. ;) > >I never heard of this little incident before; but thanks to you, and others, for >the little story. > >Cheers, >pavs It took him several weeks to get it back from Customs. Almost missed the next ACM event because of it. Shows that "bureaucrats" often have no idea of what they are doing. PLA's were off-the-shelf at radio shack parts back then...
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