Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mcnc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!decvax!mcnc!akt From: akt@mcnc.UUCP (Amit Thakur) Newsgroups: net.politics,eunet.politics Subject: Re: Nuclear arms race Message-ID: <1956@mcnc.UUCP> Date: Fri, 17-Feb-84 02:19:23 EST Article-I.D.: mcnc.1956 Posted: Fri Feb 17 02:19:23 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 18-Feb-84 01:44:39 EST References: <1745@tekig.UUCP>, <5678@mcvax.UUCP> Organization: Microelectronics Ctr. of NC; RTP, NC Lines: 39 or, we could ship them some PDP's instead of VAXen. surely their technology is advanced enough that they would not be getting any new technology? one problem though: all calls to and from the soviet union must go through an operator. an automatic system was installed for the 1980 olympics, but has since been disconnected because of objections by the kgb that there was insufficient manpower to monitor international calls. i suppose a (soviet) operator would censor incoming (and outgoing) traffic. maybe we could donate a few digital switches (4ESS,5ESS) and some optical disk drives so they could store previous articles. of course, phone line quality would have to increase quite a bit such that bit error rate was not too high. an AI program to translate between russian and english (and vice versa) would be nice also. i imagine that most of the articles submitted by russians to netnews would be from 'anonymous' or 'games' or somebody like that. maybe the 4ESS and 5ESS are too advanced. i'm sure they're just as good for military communications as they are for POTS (plain old telephone service). i think the best way to decrease tensions with the russkies is to encourage trade between the countries. sell them as many consumer goods as they can buy. build plants that produce washers and dryers and refrigerators and hair dryers and so on. then they will need generators to produce all that electricity. we could start small by producing (in the soviet union, so that hard currency problems are reduced) chewing gum and bubble gum. move on to nerf balls and frisbees. what russian child would not want a frisbee? how could they possibly believe that americans are evil if they produce such nifty things? they maybe they'll get a sneaky feeling in the back of the mind that capitalism and uncle sam are not so bad after all. maybe this feeling will grow over a few generations, so that after a couple of centuries (if both countries are not atomic dust by then) maybe things will be better. am i too optimistic? am i reinventing the wheel? akt at ...decvax!mcnc!akt