steem

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Amiga Power (June 1991)






Amiga Power (June 1991)





While there may not have been a great many Amiga specific magazines in the U.S. and no Amiga game specific magazines that I know of, there seemed to be plenty in the U.K. Amiga Power is one of those many and the June 1991 issue includes:
  • True Stories - All the news that's fit to print - from Ramparts to Rodland, from Beast Busters to Bonanza Bros. you'll find the true story in True Stories. Plus Crib Sheets. Oh dear..., and all your other regular 'favorites'...

  • The Charts - What's going up, what's coming down and what's hovering about in the middle somewhere - the 100 hottest games of the day, as voted for by you, the consumers, with your wallets.

  • Complete Control - The most reliable hints and tips in the business, here to give you Complete Control over your games. This month, level codes to Gem X and Brat, cheats for a whole bundle of older things and - yes! - the second (and concluding) massive six-page (six page!) final installment of Gary's Complete Guide to Rainbow Islands. If there's ever been a more comprehensive guide to any game printed anywhere, we'd like to see it!

  • Creation, 'Bob' and Populous II - The whole god-sim concept takes two giant steps forward, jumps to the side, and then heads off in three or four different directions at once. Peter Molyneux and the Bullfrog crew show us how...

  • If I'd Known Then... - Eric Matthews recovers from the (really quite mild) critical nitpicking Gods received last issue, dusts himself down, then tells us when he really things of the Bitmaps' old games...

  • The Bottom Line - Amiga Power's unique reference guide to every significant full price game released over the past year. Six pages packed to overflowing with Uppers, Downers and - yes! - the all important Bottom Line...

  • Do The Write Thing - Letters of praise, more letters of praise and - inevitable really - a few whinges from publishers still smarting from last month's critical drubbings. Reaction to the first issue was, erm, 'varied' to say the least...
...and more!

Friday, February 21, 2020

Big K (June 1984)






Big K (June 1984)





Big K was a U.K. based computer gaming magazine published in the 1980s. The June 1984 issue includes: Games Programs
  • BLITZ for BBC
  • EGBERT for SPECTRUM
  • MICROPEDE for BBC
  • LOAD UP WITH LOOT for ZX81
  • HUNT THE RAIDER for ATARI
  • BUST! for ORIC
  • SAVE THE CHICKENS for SPECTRUM
Software Reviews
  • Pete Shelley reviews Music Progs
Hardware
  • Wonderful Widgets
  • Atari 800XL Review
  • A Big Hi To The Wonder Chip
  • Goad Your Code
Features
  • Say No To Your Neighborhood
  • Tapeworm
  • This Mike Is All Male
  • Modern Living Special
  • Art For A(r)taris's Sake
Regulars
  • On-line News
  • Charts
  • Classic Games Of Our Time
  • Zip Code
  • Arcade Alley
Competition
  • Win A Battlezone Arcade
...and more!

Thursday, February 20, 2020

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (621-624)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a close family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

These photos are of a couple of old churches and were taken in the late 1960s. I'm not sure what church is in the first three photos but the last photo shows the interior of St. Mary's Church in Bergen, Norway.


processed March 1969

processed March 1969

processed March 1969

St. Mary's Church - Bergen - Part of interior with Baroque pulpit from 1676 - processed April 1969

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Unions Are Clearly in the Wrong about Freedom of Association


Unions have long justified themselves as exemplars of the right of freedom of association. Brenda Smith of the American Federation of Teachers said:
Exclusivity for a union with majority support…is democracy…It allows them to amplify their voice through collective action under our constitutionally protected right to freedom of association.
However, unions deprive many of their freedom of association. As the Supreme Court found in Janus, unions inflict a “significant impingement on associational freedoms that would not be tolerated in other contexts.”
This glaring inconsistency is highlighted by the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act that Democrats have recently introduced and are expected to pass in the House. It is, as Eric Boehm described it, a “veritable grab bag of policies that labor unions have been pushing Congress to pass for years.” And that grab bag would further advantage unions at the expense of others’ freedom of association.

It would require employers to provide private employee information (including cell phone numbers, email addresses, and work schedules) to union organizers, violating the associational rights of those who don’t want to join or be approached by unions. It would allow unions to initiate snap elections in non-union workplaces more rapidly, limiting opponents’ ability to present opposing positions. And it would codify “card check” elections, eliminating the protections against coercion provided by a secret ballot.

Such violations of others’ freedoms of association in the name of union rights highlight the need to recognize that cognitive dissonance.

Union “rights” delete workers’ freedom to associate with a different union, to choose alternative forms of group representation, such as voluntary unions, and to represent themselves in negotiations with employers. They delete workers’ freedom to associate with non-union employers or to resolve workplace issues directly with employers, forcing arrangements exclusively through unions.

They delete employers’ freedom to not associate with unions or to solely employ workers who have no union involvement. In heavily unionized industries, they undermine consumers’ freedom to associate with lower cost, non-union producers and force taxpayers to face higher cost government services as a result of government employee unions. In each of these ways, freedom of association is applied only as a special privilege for unions and denied to others.
Further, it must be recognized that unions violate the most basic freedom of association of many current union members. Many have never been given the right to vote on unionization, and those who might try are often knee-capped.

As James Sherk has documented, not a single current worker in many unions ever voted to select that union, and vanishingly few current workers voted for them in other instances. That destroys any claim that the union advances their current workers’ freedom of association.

Labor law requires only a majority of those who voted (not a majority of the workers) in a single certification election to allow unions to impose exclusive union representation on all workers. No further elections need ever be held. So new workers need never be given a vote on the union, and anyone who changes their mind need never be given a new chance.

That means that in workplaces unionized long ago, virtually no one who now works there voted to certify the union. Which current workers voted for UAW unionization of GM’s Michigan plants in 1937? Which current government union workers voted to certify their unions in the 1960s and 70s? Current union members have therefore often had no effective input on who represents them. They have been denied the only freedom of association plausibly consistent with unions’ freedom of association claims.

Some of the restrictions on workers’ freedom of association due to unionization could be addressed by having regular union certification elections. Decertification elections are also possible. But unions have managed to hamstring both options, revealing that workers’ freedom of association was an intended victim, not their intended motive.
Union members can try to change their union representatives in internal elections if they are unhappy with the current leadership. But even if they successfully oust their leadership, since the local is subordinate to the national union, the national one can neutralize it by putting the local one under its trusteeship and leadership. So even when unhappy workers “win,” they can lose.

Unions never offer regularly occurring union certification elections, either, despite being supported by more than four out of five union households. And when such elections have been forced on them, as when Wisconsin required government unions to face re-certification elections, union members often said “no.” Many unions did not even file for re-election, revealing how badly they had served members. In other cases, membership fell dramatically, or dues had to be cut to hold onto those who would otherwise defect.

Decertification is also strewn with restrictions. It requires signatures from 30 percent of all employees in a unit (versus 50 percent of votes cast for certification, which can be a far lower hurdle), within a one-month time frame that is only open once every three years, and those signatures cannot be gathered while employees are being paid or in work areas. Further, union members who support decertification are commonly expelled from the union (but not relieved of paying for their “representation services”), giving them still less freedom of association. Such restrictions make decertification a faulty escape valve for poorly represented workers.

In sum, not only do unions deny others’ freedom of association, they straightjacket their own members’ most essential guarantee of freedom of association and have made it all but impossible to undo the abuse. If freedom of association is a right we all have, as unions’ self-justifications claim, then current unions are clearly in the wrong and pushing further in the wrong direction.

Gary M. Galles
Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. His recent books include Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies (2014) and Apostle of Peace (2013). He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

db05 - Dragon Ball Z





Antic (July 1983)






Antic (July 1983)





Antic, subtitled "The Atari Resource", was one of the two most popular magazines to primarily cover Atari 8-bit computers in the U.S. (the other being ANALOG). The July 1983 issue would have been published a few months before the XL line of computers was widely available. It includes: Features
  • 400 Upgrade - Keyed up and RAMing to go
  • Adventuring - Participate in fantasy
  • Unfazed by the Fazer - Data buffer speeds printing
  • Conserve RAM - With BASIC's USR function
  • Talk is Cheap - Voice I/O for the Atari
  • Antic Pix Adventure - Seven adventure games
Departments
  • Profiles - Scott Adams
  • Starting Line - I/O and You
  • Inside Atari - E.T. Game for Computers - XL Line Debuts
  • Pilot Your Atari - Lines Away!
  • Systems Guide - List Assister
  • Dragonsmoke - Nice Dice
  • Education - Shoot 'Em Up Math
  • In the Public Domain - Stunt Clown
  • Games Department - Star Raiders Academy - Pacman - Dial-A-Game
  • Tape Topics - Ten Ten
  • Forth Factory - Why Go Forth
  • Assembly Language - Hokey Pokey Interrupts
  • I/O Board
  • Help!
  • New Products
  • Microscreens
  • Product Reviews
  • Atari Clinic
  • Computer Quiz
  • Looking At Books
  • Goto Directory
  • Public Domain Software
  • Listing Conventions
  • Advertisers' List
...and more!

Monday, February 17, 2020

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (617-620)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a close family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

None of the photos in this set are labeled are dated. The first photos is of a river or lake or other large body of water but I can't identify it, the second...I really have no idea, the third is a shot of some flowers and the final photo is of a house at night that looks like it has been decorated for Christmas. These were probably taken circa the early 1960s but I can't be sure.






The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Friday, February 14, 2020

VideoGames & Computer Entertainment (May 1991)






VideoGames & Computer Entertainment (May 1991)



While perhaps not everyone's cup of tea, VideoGames & Computer Entertainment was my favorite video game magazine of the late 1980s/early 1990s. The May 1991 issue includes: Features
  • VG&CE's Games Line - Hey Gamers! VG&CE has introduced the GAmes Line, (900) 45-GAMES, to help keep you up-to-date on happenings in the video game world. Don't miss out!

  • Castlevania III Player's Guide, Part II - Don't forget to bring your garlic! This month, Clay leads us up to Dracula's front door.

  • Castle of Illusion Strategy Guide, Part I - Minnie Mouse has been taken captive by the wicked witch Mizrabel, but no need to worry. In this installment, our guide will help you help Mickey rescue Minnie and get past the Masters of Illusion.

  • Summer Games Preview Guide - We'll take a look at how the latest in innovative technology has influenced this summer's heat wave of upcoming computer software releases.
Departments
  • Editor's Letter
  • Reader Mail
  • Crash & Boom
  • Tip Sheet
  • Yea & Nay
  • News Bits
  • Easter Egg Hunt
  • Destination Arcadia
  • Advertiser Index
  • Inside Gaming
  • Game Doctor
  • Gaming on the Go
Reviews
  • Video-Game Reviews - Battletoads, James Pond, Castellan, Whomp 'Em, PGA Tour Golf, S.C.A.T., Dick Tracy and Bimini Run.

  • Computer-Game Reviews - Rise of the Dragon: A Blade Hunter Mystery, Freakin' Funky Fuzzballs, Elvira, The Killing Game Show, Spirit of Excalibur, Interceptor, Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire and The Amazing Spider-Man.

  • Computer-Game Strategies - This month, our computer-game dilettante shows us how to master Ishido and outwit do-gooders in Night Hunter.
...and more!

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

The World’s Top 10 Manufacturing Nations Since 1970


Here’s a new animated “bar chart race” visualization showing the world’s top ten manufacturing nations by share of global manufacturing output from 1970 to 2018 using data from the statistics division of the United Nations. Flourish has updated its graphing program, and you can now stop the visualization with the arrow in the lower-left corner. You can also fast-forward (or go back) to a specific year by clicking on it. A few observations:
  1. The USSR was the world’s second-largest manufacturing nation from 1970 until it was surpassed by Japan in 1983, which rose to the No. 2 position.
  2. After overtaking Russia in 1983, Japan quickly rose as a manufacturing powerhouse and almost overtook the USA by the mid-1990s, including in 1993 when Japan produced 22.1% of world output vs. 22.9% for the USA and in 1995 when Japan produced 22.0% of the world’s manufacturing vs. USA’s 22.2% share.
  3. China’s rise to become one of the world’s top manufacturers started in the mid-1990s after a long period of producing a fairly stable share of only 3-4% of the world’s factory output from 1970 to 1995. By 1996, China was out-producing both Italy and France for the first time and outproduced Germany starting in 2001 before surpassing Japan in 2007 and the USA in 2010.
  4. Despite falling to the No. 2 position behind China in 2010, the USA is still a global manufacturing powerhouse and produced more manufacturing output in 2018 ($2.32 trillion) than No. 3 Japan, No. 4 Germany, and No. 5 Korea combined ($2.27 trillion) and more than No. 4 Germany, No. 5 Korea, No. 6 India, No. 7 Italy, and No. 8 France combined ($2.26 trillion).

This article was reprinted with permission from the American Enterprise Institute.



Mark J. Perry
Mark J. Perry is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (613-616)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a close family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

None of the photos in this set are labeled are dated. There is a photo of two women sitting by the shore with a dog, a photo of a totem pole, a photo of a large body of water, and a photo of what looks like a walkway over a dam.





The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Monday, February 10, 2020

The Best Of Hardcore Computing (1984)






The Best Of Hardcore Computing (1984)



Hardcore Computing started life primarily as a magazine that provided information on circumventing disk based copy protection (mostly for the Apple II) though it did contain some other, mostly technical, content. This "Best Of" issue from 1984 includes all such information published by the magazine up until that point in organized, condensed, updated and corrected form. Contents include:
  • Getting into DOS with DISKEDIT
  • An inside look at disk formats using DISKVIEW
  • Deprotecting disks with SUPER IOB
  • A quick and easy way to UNLOCK HYPERSPACE WARS
  • Taking a peek at BOOT CODE TRACING
  • List of Publisher abbreviations and INTRODUCTION TO 'PARMS'
  • The Compleat Guide to LOCKSMITH PARAMETERS
  • Step-by-step guide to making backups using NIBBLEs AWAY II PARAMETERS
  • Technical notes and making backups using BACK-IT-UP II+ PARAMETERS
  • How to make backups using COPY II PLUS PARAMETERS
  • Curing those Auto-Start ROM blues HARDWARE SOLUTIONS
  • A MENU HELLO PROGRAM
  • USING BOTH SIDES OF YOUR DISKETTES
  • Advanced Playing Techniques, or how to get INSIDE CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN
  • Learn to use and understand Strings wtih TEXT INVADERS
  • Getting into Hi-res with ZYPHYR WARS
  • CHECKSOFT/CHECKBIN
...and more!

Thursday, February 6, 2020

PUMA 2 - Dominion





Amiga CD32 Gamer (December 1994)






Amiga CD32 Gamer (December 1994)





The Amiga CD32 was arguably the world's first fully 32-bit game console. It's launch in Europe was quite successful and being based on the Amiga 1200, it was a powerful console for its time. Unfortunately, because of Commodore's financial difficulties, a U.S. release never happened (though it was officially released in Canada). Sales of the Amiga CD32 were not enough to keep Commodore from bankruptcy. Despite its short life, even the CD32 had its own magazines. The December 1994 issue of Amiga CD32 Gamer from the U.K. includes:
  • CD instructions - Our Christmas CD is packed with goodies that will keep you going through the New Year and beyond. There's Beneath a Steel Sky, Turn N Burn, Super Stardust and more. Of course, if you bought Lamborghini, then think of all the joy ahead of you! No drinking and driving now...

  • previews - Exciting things are happening in the world of the CD32. Evasive Action is on its way, while World Cup Golf and Power Drive are on their way from US Gold. All impressive, all worthwhile and all here!

  • Master Axe - Our man Derek takes his life in his hands to meet Neil Axe and his martial artists who feature in this new game from Millennium. There's even an interview with the programmer and a unique insight into the actual people that appear as characters in the game. And it's all written in Del Boy's inimitable, flowing fashion. Gee, aren't you all lucky?

  • Reviews - T'was the day before deadline day, and all was quiet... nothing stirred, not even a mouse (mind you, if there were mice in the offices I'd be outta here). Then, from afar, bells tolled and a cry was heard. 'Get your lazy, good for nothing backside back here and finish the flippin' magazine!'. And you thought this job was glamorous.
    • Beneath A Steel Sky
    • Roadkill
    • Fields of Glory
    • Marvin's Marvellous Adventure
    • Jungle Strike
    • Tower Assault
    • Alien Breed 2

  • subs - If you're young and you get lots of Christmas money, we know a good home for your dosh. If you're older and you've got credit, we know a good home for your...credit. And if you've got one of those bottles with lots of pennies in it, we'll take that too.

  • playing tips - Universe - Solved! Gunship 2000 - Solved (sorta...)! Fury of the Furries - calmed! Now, if only we could solve the problems that arise from having moaning families round at Christmas then we'd be more happier and content. Oh well, just have to get drunk again...

  • correspondence - Once more, your esteemed Editor returns to accept those bouquets and parry those brickbats. Mind you, he's a little peeved at the lack of Chrissie presents he's received this year. Unwanted whisky bottles (preferably full) gladly accepted.

  • mail order - Seems we have to clear up a few things concerning Mail Order. This is where you can order lots of CD32 goodies, like tip books, cheap games and even a nifty joypad. Would our female readers please stop using this service to try to order girlie looking assistant Editors. It's MAIL not MALE. Thank you.

  • A-Z - Some say that the A-Z is the easiest section to compile. Well, that may well be the case, but we also realize that it's one of the most precious and informative items in the magazine. Where else can you learn so much for so little?

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (609-612)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a close family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

The first photo was taken at Lopez Dam/Lopez Lake in California circa June 1969. The second photo is of a fireplace but is unlabeled and undated. The third photo was taken at the fortress/palace of Alhambra in Granada, Andalusia, Spain circa 1972. The final photo is of the Seville Cathedral and was taken circa September 1969.


Lopez Dam - processed June 1969


Alhambra - processed May 1972

Seville - Cathedral - processed September 1969

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

Beware the Incentives of “Forgiving” Student Loan Debt


Reality has a habit of interrupting the stories people tell themselves.

The 18th-century philosopher George Berkeley constructed complex arguments to prove that matter doesn’t really exist. In response, Samuel Johnson famously kicked a rock and said, “I refute (him) thus.”

Like Berkeley, our politicians spend too much time imagining how they might shape society to achieve their preferred outcomes. But they don’t live in the real world. When you earn enough that you don’t have to ask how much things cost, and you’re surrounded by people who are afraid to tell you when you’re full of it, you won’t often know when you’re thinking stupid thoughts.

But once in a while, someone like Samuel Johnson comes along, and with a few words brings reality back into sharp focus. We received two such welcome doses of reality this month. January opened with Ricky Gervais reminding the Hollywood glitterati who pontificate on economics and politics that they have no idea what they’re talking about. And now it closes with an angry father confronting presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren about her proposal to forgive student loans.
The father, who worked two jobs so his daughter could graduate college with no debt, asked, “Am I going to get my money back?” Warren’s reply: “Of course not.”

With those three words, reality intruded into Warren’s story about student debt forgiveness, and everyone except Warren appeared to realize it. The father drove the lesson home:
My buddy had fun, bought a car, went on vacations. I saved my money. He made more than I did. ... We did the right thing, and we get screwed.
But still, Elizabeth Warren didn’t get it.

Politicians’ elaborate plans for “fixing” things so often go awry because, in their minds, we will all respond to their policy tinkerings in exactly the way they intend. In Warren’s mind, her plan to have the government “forgive” student loans will magically resolve with students everywhere being debt-free, and everyone else’s lives being the better for it.

But that’s not how it works. People don’t respond to laws. People respond to incentives.
When politicians decide to “forgive” debt, they give people an incentive to borrow more and to borrow less prudently. For the same reason that people’s menu choices change when someone else is picking up the tab at the restaurant, so too would students’ and parents’ behaviors change if Warren forces someone else to pay the tuition bill.

Too many students already choose majors that have little market value. Imagine how much worse this would be when students don’t have to pay back the money they borrow for their degrees. College tuition is already too high. Imagine how much worse this would be when students don’t care how much college costs because someone else is paying the bill.

Too few high school students already choose to go into the trades. Imagine how much worse this would be when high school seniors face a choice of working to learn a trade or spending four years partying on the taxpayers’ dime. The federal government already runs trillion-dollar deficits. Imagine how much worse this would be when the government has to spend even more money each year to pay off student loan debts.

The stark reality is that “forgiving student debt” really means forcing people who didn’t go to college to pay for those who did, and forcing people who scrimped and saved for college to pay for those who didn’t. This punishes prudent, frugal choices while rewarding their opposite.

The father who confronted Elizabeth Warren knows this, but Warren just can’t see it. He is Samuel Johnson, kicking her rock. Apparently he didn’t kick hard enough.

This article was republished from Canton Rep. 



Antony Davies
Dr. Antony Davies is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow at FEE, associate professor of economics at Duquesne University, and co-host of the podcast, Words & Numbers.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

NewPumaSis - Dominion





Popular Computing Weekly – May 20, 1982





Popular Computing Weekly – May 20, 1982
Popular Computing Weekly, as the name describes, was a monthly publication (in the U.K.) that covered popular home computers of the 1980s. The issue from the week of May 20th, 1982 includes:
  • News - Spectrum add-ons, Commodore software competition.
  • Club Reports - Mick Ryan reports on the independent Commodore Products User Group.
  • Labyrinth - Dave Middleton presents an amazing maze game for you to play.
  • Reviews - Pinball, Galaxy Invader, disc drive for the Vic-20.
  • Open Forum - Seven pages of programs.
  • Sound & vision - Sam Blythe on music, Brian Reffin Smith on art.
  • Hand & mouth - John Gowrie on calculators, John Dawson on languages.
  • Programming - BBC functions by Tim Hartnell.
  • Peek & poke - Your questions answered.
  • Competitions - Crossword.
...and more!

Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (605-608)

See the previous post in this series here.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides a while back. These are pictures span from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with having some negatives I wanted to scan is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer (or perhaps a close family member) from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them. I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

These are all unlabeled but the first two were processed in March 1961 and are landscape photos, the second of which appears to be taken from the air. The last two photos were processed in January 1961 and look like they were taken around Christmas.


processed March 1961

processed March 1961

processed January 1961

processed January 1961

The entire collection that has been scanned and uploaded so far can be found here.

DC-UK (December 2000)






DC-UK (December 2000)



The Dreamcast was probably my favorite Sega console and the only one I owned when it was active. Like most consoles, it had magazines dedicated to it. DC-UK, as you might imagine, is a U.K. based Dreamcast magazine. The December 2000 issue includes: Features
  • From Geek to Chic - Ex-Edge editor Jason Brookes explores how videogames suddenly became an okay thing to do with your mates rather than a stigmatizing bedroom hobby beloved of lonely boys. From DJ culture to the cynical world of licensing, Brookes assesses the individual elements with the intellectual rigor of a rocket scientist. If you want to know why it is that you're playing games rather than, say, hanging out at that new wine bar that just opened on the high street, you must read this.
DC-Preview
  • Quake: Arena - We bench-test the Dreamcast online happening of the year. Can it live up to the legendary PC experience?
  • Le Mans 24 Hour - The classic French race is here! And you can actually race it for 24 hours!
DC-Express
  • Tomb Raider 5 - Lara Croft is back in her absolutely very last (honestly) Tomb Raider adventure. So how did she get out of that tomb in the end of Last Revelation? The answer is not as simple as you think...
  • Unreal Tournament - More snippets about this main contender to Quake IV's multiplayer FPS throne.
DC-Review
  • Jet Set Radio - Sega's skating, spraying and running from the law sim finally reaches UK shores. So does it play as good as it looks?
  • Half-Life - The game voted "best PC game ever" by readers of PC Gamer is now on Dreamcast. Not only is it a perfect translation, it also adds a whole new mission. But just what is Blue Shift?
  • UFC - There are men in spandex out there who demand to be beaten up. Make their wishes come true in the fisticuff competition known simply as the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
  • Silent Scope - Take out scum from the rooftops in Konami's invigorating and ethically dubious sniper romp. They are terrorists so they deserve it.
  • SFIII: Third Strike - If you thought the first or second strikes hurt, wait till you feel the third one.
DC-Tips
  • Virtua Tennis - Are you as useless as most British people when it comes to this sport? Don't fret - unlike our real life tennis hopefuls, like that Henman fella, you can be trained in the art of the raquet.
  • Codes - Beat games the easy way - you cheating monkeys!
  • F355 Challenge - Having trouble making it out of eight place? No wonder! You've got all the assists on you fool! Read our guide and be done with them forever.
DC-Interactive
  • Q and A
  • Challenge
  • D-M@il
Regulars
  • Editorial intro
  • Internet News
  • Subscriptions
  • Next Month
  • Team Diary
...and more!

Monday, February 3, 2020

dom puma - Dominion





Why Socialism Often Leads to Tyranny


There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that communism leads to tyranny. Mention the countries North Korea, Cuba, the Soviet Union, Mao Tse Tung’s China, East Germany, and Venezuela, and most people immediately think of an oppressed population with almost no economic opportunity and no political freedom. The words communist dictatorship roll off the tongue like the two words have gone together forever. In fact, in an extreme irony, communism, ostensibly the most egalitarian form of government, in two cases led to the least egalitarian form of government: royalty or the rule of one family over time. The Kim family in North Korea and the Castros in Cuba have been ruling their countries like the kings and queens of old for some time.

Sometimes it is argued that the personalities involved lead to tyranny, not communism or socialism. Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Fidel Castro, Erich Honecker, and Pol Pot are all bad people, but the personalities at the top matter little. Once a communist form of government is established, tyranny is the only result, regardless of which government official Game of Thrones’d their way to the top. Let’s examine the causal links that make communism a living hell for the people who have to live with it.
The good news is you are entitled to housing, education, health care, and food. But that doesn’t mean people no longer have to work. The Soviet Constitution of 1936-Article 12 stated that “Labor in USSR is a duty and honorable obligation of each able citizen according to the principle: ‘Those who don’t work—don’t eat.’”

If you persisted in demanding your right not to work, you wound up in the gulag, so thank God you live in a free enterprise, democratic society.

The real issue that needs to be addressed here is that a government that controls everything can quash dissent by changing the economic situation of anyone who is pointing out their defects or is involved with the opposition. In a communist society, all jobs, all levels of education, the national police, the medical system, the judicial system, the electoral system, the housing stock, the food distribution system, the military, the press, and all forms of transportation are controlled by the central government.

Write an insightful article about how a local government official is making a huge mistake (if you can find a computer to write it on), and you may find your apartment changed to the worst one available in a city where you don’t want to live. You could be reassigned from the job you trained years to get. For those of you who think the government using the medical system to advance its own interests is the fevered paranoia of a deranged libertarian, I would remind you that the Hong Kong protestors have developed a separate medical network rather than use public hospitals.
When most of us interface with the outside world, we expect the highest possible pay for the work we do, and when we buy things, we expect the highest quality at the lowest possible price. Economics adds up those personal tendencies over millions of people in large, complex societies and comes up with a few simple rules that describe economic behavior. Supply and demand, marginal revenue and marginal cost, the theory of money, and specialization and exchange are really just simple rules that take all people’s actions and abilities into account and arrive at a solution that balances the overall societal equation.

Communists and socialists don’t like these simple economic rules and come up with their own, such as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (your needs are generally unlimited), which conflicts with human nature. When you implement policies that conflict with human nature, you have to use force to implement them.

One example of arbitrary socialist economics is Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s drastic intervention in the electronics businesses of Venezuela in 2013. The government of Venezuela basically arrested the managers of one electronics store chain and forced the company to sell its products at lower prices. A few people got a cheap television on a one-time basis thanks to coercive government intervention, but you can bet that any ability to buy quality electronics at a good price in Venezuela is now gone.

A more serious example of communist economics is the Soviet farm collectivization of the 1930s. All the private, family-owned farms of the Soviet Union were converted to large collectivized farms. Stalin privately admitted to Churchill that 10 million people died, either from starvation or resistance to the forced farm collectivization. With a communist dictatorship, when a leader goes off the rails, there are no moderating forces that bring compromise or allow negotiation for alternative paths to lead a society toward its goals.

Every person who works in a communist society is paid by the government and knows they will be paid whether the organization they are working for provides goods or services to customers or not. This is very different than a society where most companies are private and employees know that if the company or the part of the company they work for doesn’t sell products that pay the companies expenses, they won’t be employed anymore. A communist society also has no private company competition to provide improved, cheaper, and higher quality goods and services.

A communist society’s productivity is a mere fraction of the productivity of an economy based on capitalism and free enterprise. The work ethic deteriorated so severely in the Soviet Union that a saying began circulating among the workers: “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” For a society to operate at an economic level much lower than its potential for generations is a loss that can never be regained.
One great defender of liberty in the United States that never gets much credit is your local police department. They enforce the laws we all care about—murder, assault, robbery—but they report no higher than the local mayor or county supervisor and are paid for by local taxes.

Communist societies are very top-heavy. They all have national-level police departments with ominous-sounding names that enforce the one true ideology over the entire country. In many communist countries, these national-level police forces turn family members against each other by asking children to turn in their parents if they say or do something against the government. One phone call seals your fate if you are a dissenter or independent thinker who is questioning how the government is doing things.

To think about this concretely, imagine some high-level government official in the United States said another political party needed to be eradicated by force and/or locked up in prison. They’d have to get the law passed and then get thousands of local police departments to enforce it—a daunting task. Decentralized power is a power that defends liberty.
Socialism is communism-lite. They believe in nationalizing some industries and or important societal functions but not all. Socialists will usually nationalize utilities, transportation, and large industries that tend to have labor problems. Here, the personalities involved matter a lot. Socialist governments either respect the prior governmental rules of free elections, separation of powers, and individual choice, or they push for complete government control of everything by their political party and end up allowing no dissenting political parties or individuals.

To understand whether socialism leads to communism, we will study two cases. The first case is Britain after WWII when socialist parties were elected to national political office. The second case is Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1999 on a socialist platform.

These post-war British socialists took it pretty seriously. They nationalized coal, electricity, steel, and the railways and set up the National Health Service to provide government-run health care. Farms and grocery stores were allowed to be private, and the British electoral system was left to allow free and fair elections. After a number of years, the British economy performed poorly under socialism, and the British people elected politicians who believed in free enterprise and turned things around. Socialism doesn’t always lead to communism, and Britain pulled back from the brink when they saw that the socialist promise led to everyone being worse off.

In Venezuela, the democratically elected Chavistas pushed for governmental control and brought in Cuban intelligence agents to assist them in quashing dissent and controlling the population. Venezuela had a special problem in that the government tried to force businesses into selling goods and services at a loss, implemented draconian currency controls, and were then surprised when the businesses stopped operating. The result in Venezuela was that stores had no goods on their shelves, hospitals had no medicines or machines that worked, and ordinary people took to looking through trash for food. Various political maneuvers were implemented by the Chavistas, the legislature was restructured, the judiciary was stacked, and the electoral system was compromised.

Now, any political avenue for changing the government in Venezuela is gone, and they have the very dictatorship that characterizes communist societies, along with a broken economy that works very poorly, even by communist standards. If you want to implement communism, you start up mass production of staples, implement rationing, and wink at the black markets that spring up. In Venezuela, the socialists pushed their way through to dictatorship and tyranny, and a complete economic breakdown was the result.
As I’ve said before, a communist society controls almost every personal, educational, political, and economic aspect of society. When faced with a government that has all those levers of control, you can be the toughest, meanest, smartest person and have people who agree with you—and your chance of changing the people in charge of the government is very low.

Once the communist party in any given country has command over almost every control point, they all seem to have enough competence to use that authority to stay in power. Someone joked to me once that communism is the Hotel California of political systems—once you are in it, you can never leave. I can think of very few cases where “the people” overthrew a communist government. When a communist government moves on to a more open, pluralistic society, it is almost always because the people at the top decide communism is a bad idea and it is time to move on.

Gorbachev opened the door, and communism fell in the Soviet Union. When communism fell in the Soviet Union, the countries in Eastern Europe that had communism forced on them threw off that yoke. In China, the people at the top decided to allow some free enterprise and individual opportunity to spring up while not giving up political control.
A healthy society proactively avoids concentrating all power and resources in one party or person. This is more than just having multiple political parties and elections. It is the deliberate structure of society so that layers of local government, private companies, private or local educational institutions, civic organizations, judicial and police systems, individuals with personal wealth, non-profits, and religious organizations act as a brake on any party or person that goes off the rails and attempts to implement a dictatorship over society as a whole. A healthy society has private businesses that have to serve customers to stay in business.

In a healthy society, politicians are given power relating only to their function: legislating, performing legal judgments, or managing a very specific, well-defined part of the government. Checks and balances with other offices of government are implemented to further reduce the power of government officials. The next time you get angry at the person your fellow voters put into office, remember that limited government is the tool that makes it so that leader can do fewer things that affect your life.

The siren song of socialism and communism is alluring. Perhaps it is human nature that we want to be taken care of in all circumstances and be assured that no other person has material circumstances much better than our own. But the record is crystal clear. Socialism and communism lead to underperforming economies, loss of individual opportunity for generations, equality implemented by everyone being poor except the party apparatchiks, lack of innovation and progress, and incredible political and religious oppression. The next time you vote, look past the siren song and vote for someone who understands where freedom and liberty really come from.

Thomas Gordon
Thomas Gordon is a Silicon Valley Software Engineer with extensive UCLA Economics training who has blogged on financial matters as The Market Flash on Seeking Alpha.  Twitter tag: @flash7gordon

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.