Re: tlug: parallel-port IDE

[Karl-Max Wagner <karlmax@example.com>]

> Yeah.  The modernization of Japan that began in the Meiji era is a great case
> in point.  Japanese sea power, as one example, in a very short period of
> time went from oar galleys to a modern, world-class navy that shattered
> Russian naval power in decisive battles. Less than a century after the U.S.

Sure. It helped, though, that the Czar regime at that time as
well as the Russian aarmy at the time was pretty much in
shambles.

> government forced the Tokugawa shogunate to open the country , Japan had a
> real shot at defeating the world's great powers in a major war (not total
> defeat, but they could have had a negotiated peace and kept most or all of
> what they  had gained).  All it would have taken was for the Japanese navy to
> have blown the tank farm at Pearl Harbor and to have approached Midway with
> the same seriousness and sense of danger with which it approached the Pearl
> Harbor operation.

Hmmm....they wouldn't have gotten towards Pearl Harbour at all
if the US government ( which knew about the impending attack on
Pearl Harbour well in advance ) wouldn't have allowed it in
order to prepare the American public for entering WW II.

As for world class excellence of the Japanese military
technology of that era - please read the excellent book
"Maboroshii no reedaa Wuertzburg" ( Panoramic radar system
Wuertzburg ) by Kiyokazu Tsuda. It reports about the joint
German - Japanese efforts of setting up production of the
"Wuertzburg" class panoramic P-band radars.

According to that book, tubes more complicated than triodes were
not manufactured in Japan. Key parts of the system had to be
imported from Germany with German submarines because there were
no Japanese submarines that could go most of the way from Germany
to Japan without refueling.

Telefunken Corporation also sent an engineer to their partner
company Nihon Musen ( aka JRC ) named Heinrich Foders. This guy
must have been a real genius with knowledge ranging from the
details of tube manufacturing to the intricacies of complex
radar circuitry. Upon arrival he found out that for the most
part components suitable for the Wuertzburg were unavailable.
Thus he first set up factories for that. The stock tube at the
time was the RV12P2000 and he had LOTS of hassles until this
tube could be made reliably in Japan. Concurrently he set up
operations to get the rest manufactured. It appears like a
wonder - but some days before the surrender they completed one
of these systems. Four others were already around in an
uncomplete state.

If you call that "world clas", well.... I call this
"substandard".....

However, in 1941 the US military wise weren't a serious
adversary. They in fact were so badly underequipped that they
had to ask the US hams to turn in their equipment to equip the
army with radios ..... ! ( Read the wartime QST's for that -
fascinating reading, particularly their lead articles that were
always called "It seems to us..." ).

> Granted, the leadership that achieved such industrial modernization seems
> rather lacking now, but Japan has demonstrated many times since it entered
> that modern era that once it finally acts, it moves quickly and usually

As I showed in the above, it was rather the exploitation of
gross negligencies of its competitors than anything like a "full
steam ahead" mentality. Particularly, it was always ad hoc -
without any effective long range planning.

> successfully.  This was shown in auto making, and in electronics as well.  It
> will happen in computers, too.

It's not in computers. It's in INFORMATICS. Computers are just a
tiny ( albeit crucial ) part of this.

For informatics, the scenery is pretty much set: the point of
all events is the INTERNET - and I fail to see how that could be
changed anytime soon. Certainly not by a single country - an
entity far inferior in power to the Internet.

Whoever wants to play a role in informatics, must play a role in
the Internet - the most dynamic environment there ever was.

================================================================
"It was hell. They knew it.          Karl-Max Wagner
  But they called it                 karlmax@example.com
    W-I-N-D-O-Z-E"
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