Sunday, May 4, 2014

Scout Stuff. Exerpts from Scout 93.... The Fugly Lies

Firstly some clarity. Why do I write about this stuff ? Living on the street, being constantly bombarded with microwaves, never being allowed to have a complete nights sleep, having my computers destroyed and stolen, having my food intake drugged (at the supermarket shelf level), none of these are my imagination, yet to those whom it has not happened, I can certainly understand how unlikely it all
sounds. I believe it is because I have discovered that some people can be very evil (as per their treatment of me vis microwave and acoustic weapons and other things as described in the scout files) and that it
is obvious that they treat me this way to stop me from revealing my discoveries to you. My thesis is that I would seem to represent a microcosm of society and the injustices perpetrated on
me represent your future, the wise are those that are acting in accordance with my revelations.
I will say, that although they have a head start on us of several thousand years – we can win this. Although staying out of the concentration camps and obtaining a defence against the microwave
weapons would seem to be important elements. I like to think that I write about this stuff because I came upon it accidentally. At first I refused to believe it. Then I started to eliminate all that was wrong with the various “rumours” on YouTube. What I was left with after I had eliminated all that was patently disinformation/misinformation was that we were headed for some type of calamitous event that had caused the Western Governments of the world to divert billions/trillions of taxpayer funds into underground bunker and food storage.
One fact was glaringly obvious. Almost no-one in Authority was playing with a straight deck.
In fact, it became obvious to me that even those in charge were lying to each other. When Presidents around the world give each other impossible short timetables to construct underground bunkers, [per ViVo, Indonesia/Malaysia] and omit important future events (methane fireballs, Plasma soup ingress, Peratt Plasma columns, effective nuclear winter), then it is obvious that the intended objective is for a very few chosen will actually come out the other side of what we,
as a planet are facing [see discussion about nutritional matters later in this document].
I am not actually sure any more whether I am in a good place or bad place. The people around me act friendly, but occasionally something doesn't make sense. One of the things that doesn't make sense to me is the resources they put into drugging me with paliperidone. The other day they had an entire complicated Ambulance scenario complete with herding (stabbing followed by fake Tetanus shot?) indigenous folk.
The KOVTR website is now injected with a low grade tracking Virii... and I am not in a position to clean it.
There would in fact appear to be two web sites, one just for me and one for the rest of you.
Every so often I see the second site when I peek briefly from a computer that they don't know I have access too. Therefore I have to assume that the Scout files are not always getting out to where they need to get too and may not be the same files as written by myself.
Therefore, dear reader, please send your copy of this file to those whom you would like to help.
Games.
There are few of us that don't like playing games.
Rubic's cube took the world by storm because although it looked simple, for most of it was a difficult and challenging obstacle.
Autistic persons or those with Aspergers syndrome related to coloured patterns better than the rest of us and made the solution look easy.
Many of us like the occasional game of skill or intellectual challenge.
Some of us like to play Chess, or Doom or Wolfenstein or Call of Duty.
All of these games have the ability to accelerate our adrenalin levels and allow us to feel “alive”.
In many of these games, particularly the interactive [online] games there is a level of psychological deviousness. Feinting to the left when you intend to go to the right.
Let the enemy think you are doing one thing when doing exactly the opposite.
A pretty neat trick.
In the fifties, ladies were told that a good housewife puts her husbands slippers in front of him, and mixes a couple of Martinis as he walks in the door from a hard day at the office.
In the eighties, the ladies discovered that the office wasn't actually that hard. As a consequence, they have taken over the Boardrooms of several companies world wide.
Yet even here I see the hand of the master puppeteer at work. Female versus male. A new disagreement. Divide and Conquer. Give them something else to worry about.
To the people running this show, the concept is give them entertainment, take their money, use it to build bunkers.
The advantage of a being a scout.
Knowing that the Government are lying about scintillation levels.
(They are a lot worse than people realise.)
Unfortunately, Simplicity Funerals will have a bumper and growing crop every month this year.
Mainly elder male members of our society. (Daily aspirin will help a little for the heart racing from the radiation but it will not prevent the rapid onset metastasising cancers.)
The rest of us will find that food at the Supermarkets is no longer fresh.
Tomatoes, Peaches, Watermelons, Bananas – all with soft spots that appear to be coming from inside the fruit. I identified this trend last year with my warnings about safe and unsafe foods.
This year of course, it is becoming harder to hide. However, as per last year, I will say that under plastic and hydroponically grown plants are of course still edible. In fact, they're the only ones I would buy.
The disadvantages of being a scout.
Well , can you imagine waking every day in a different location and being surprised to do so.
In another universe at another time, I would seriously contemplate applying for the most shot person in the Guinness Book of Records.
I estimate that I have been shocked, shot and jabbed with over fifty thousand individual (e.g.: last weekend in the mall I estimate there were at least 65-80 people all punching their mobile phones as I walked through the mall. The total number of needle like to pencil like jabs that I felt around my heart, neck and head would be over a thousand in the space of only a few minutes.
We have also learnt in the last few months that these people are not above injecting palperidone into food on the shelves at the supermarkets.
In fact I was banned from the Mitchell Centre so that they could have somewhere safe to continue their shopping from. Yet, curiously whilst they are all aiding Bill Painter and his merry band of Mossad hit men to herd me around, deprive me of sleep [to destroy my immune system] and poison my food, they are not really telling them about how much radiation is really coming into town.
Last year during the more serious radiation events, I noticed that police cars were absent from our roads.
This month, that is no longer the case.

Therefore the sham “we'll make sure you're safe” is starting to fall apart because of the growing radiation levels.
Of course, no-one will realise they've been duped until the 1% are under ground in their bunkers.
And when they go to their bunkers, that's when the rest of us will realise that we have been used in a most evil fashion to provide the wherewithal for the 1% to be safe.
Yet even those numbers are not right.
The Georgia Guide-stones gives succour and comfort to the scores of minions out there that believe...



But lets just look at 1% of the worlds population which is actually only 70million. 
The event/earth changes that we are about to go through will last seventy-two years.
So that's food for 70 million for seventy-two years.
Assuming they will be living on minimum rations... that requires: 
For comparative purposes, a McDonalds Big Mac is 8750 Calories.
And Water...

Assuming a very sedentary underground lifestyle.

Giving us a total of 40 tons per person per lifespan. That is, 40 pallets of food and water approximately 1.4 metres high x 990 mm x 1120 mm or 65 cubic metres per person.

(This is the “lean” and absolutely minimum levels of food intake model.)
Seventy million people therefore require 4,585,229,404 (four billion) cubic metres of food storage.
Somehow, I don't think they have the seventy million covered...
That they will be one of the five hundred million.
In fact, The Australian head of whoever has the money to send Apache helicopters, 727's, Dornier Search and Rescue, Navy King Helicopters and 200+ foot patrols (Bill Painter) has for the last few years been involved in getting fish farming right.
This suggests to me that in fact, fish will be the main fresh food fare as well as beans and mushrooms.
The Biosphere experiments of the eighties proved that a quarter acre block of land can provide food for eight people, although not enough to make them overweight. The papers on the topic stress that protein levels needed to be boosted with fresh protein (fish ?) to ensure success in the future.
The plans that I viewed in Bill Painter's Fivedock offices for Fish Farms were small and designed to produce fish in the less than five hundred kilograms per week quantities.
(In other words, sufficient to feed a core group of 
Protein p/Serve = 17 Gms. Can of Sardines Approx = 2750 Cal.
Gee 23 people (and point 8). Huge number. Just how Many Politicians, Policeman, Public Servants, Aboriginals has Mr. Painter promised to save ?
Mr. Painter will be looking after number one. His wife Dr Evelyn [get the drugs right for Tom], his two children and his faithful sidekick, Saul. Maybe the household dog will get saved as well.
I do believe that there are some resources constructed around Australia, in the Gulf country (Carpentaria), Nabarlek, and most likely the hills around Kosciusko where Mr. Painter once told me he had access to acreage.
So how many will survive ? Mr. Painter will survive and he is obviously determined that I shall not...
Well that depends on how many have access to alternative energy generation systems.
The only power systems that will function adequately in the future will be those that are compatible with a plasma environment. (So probably not anything that relies on VLSI (high density) chipset technology.) I'm guessing the actual numbers that have adequate food and potable (non-radioactive) water supplies will be very limited.
Places like VRD downs in the Kimberley's and the Pyramid building at Pine Creek are too little, too late.
These facilities will provide shelter in the future but the radiation levels now are already claiming victims amongst the elder members of the male population. (Men's blood is thicker and harder to pump through a radiation stressed heart.)
The Water...
Its all about the water. The chemtrails have been dumping nasties into our water supply since 2007.
As the majority of rain is now chemtrail derived, a great deal of our drinking water is now leaning towards the toxic.
Indigenous Essential Services Sustainable Water Management
http//www.powerwater.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/29190/PW_SWM_AR_web.pdf
To ensure reliable, good quality water supply to remote parts of the Northern. Territory, beginning with the variable nature of the extent and quality of groundwater supplies.
The large underground catchments in the Northern Territory are the big draw card. http://kovtr.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/WaterboreCuttings.xls
Water bores in the NT
Aboriginal legend tells of a people that survived a previous underground dreaming time by eating underground burrowing marsupials (predominantly Bandicoots).
Drinking Radio-active water or eating vegetables watered with radio active water is a fast way to become rather glowy.
There have over the last ten years several attempts to map and discover all natural water resources in Australia.
The need to find non surface water that is under pressure is becoming urgent.
Therefore bore water, from an area that isn't on a fault line, and liquid urea on the plants is the best long term plan.
I would also try to recycle the plant watering to be reutilised over and over again by diverting the drainage form the plants to a small pond with the appropriate water lily rhizomes and duckweed.
Along with Caves....
 
Figure 1: Australian karst areas, showing climatic zones. Zone II Monsoonal wet-dry tropics; Zone III Arid; Zone IV Mediterranean winter wet/ summer dry.
Normally I end with Rice, Water yadda yadda, today we end with :
Duckweed for Water Cleaning and Energy Productionprominent, because
In recent years a commonly occurring aquatic plant, “duckweed”, has become prominent because of its ability to concentrate minerals on heavily polluted water such as that arising from sewage treatment facilities. However, it has also attracted the attention of scientists because of its apparent high potential as a feed resource for livestock (Skillicorn et al., 1993; Leng, et al., 1994). Duckweed grows on water with relatively high levels of N, P and K and concentrates the minerals and synthesises protein. These are the nutrients which are often critically deficient in traditional fodders and feeds given to ruminants and to pigs and poultry particularly where the former depend on 
 
 
agro-industrial byproducts and crop residues. The plant duckweed can be exploited in several ways, since it can simultaneously clean the wastewater, produce animal feed and be used as a Duckweed is a hardy floating plant that reproduces vegetatively very fast; it can easily cover the surface of almost any aquarium within several days. Regular (weekly) removal of excess plants is necessary to prevent total coverage of the water surface. It is quite attractive when it occurs among other floating plants. Most aquarists acquire Duckweed as "hitchhikers" on other plants, wood and floating in fish bag water.It is a high nutrient-requirement plant, thus particularly useful in new aquaria and "natural" filtration of water; if this plant does not grow well, it is a certain sign of nutrient deficiency in the water. Rarely will there be troublesome algae with duckweed on the surface. High in protein and fats, it is a nutritious food source (and an excellent natural laxative) for vegetarian fishes such as goldfish and carp; the common name comes from the fact that ducks are very fond of eating this plant. This species is almost indistinguishable from Lemna gibba. Both will flower above water, though fruit is very rare with L. minor. The plants propagate by division and this is very rapid. The floating "leaves" are actually fronds, 1 to 8(10) mm long and 0.6 to 7 mm wide. I am familiar with four types of duckweed: Little duckweed (Lemna minor), Great duckweed (Lemna polyrrhiza) Thick duckweed (Lemna gibba) and Cross duckweed (Lemna triscula).So we will try to do an update file on Duckweed in the near future. But in the mean time. Google is your friend. (OK, it can be used for searching. It's not really your friend.)

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The Birth of the Sharing Culture.

by Tom Koltai at 04:12AM (EST) on February 5, 2009
Culture: is a shared, learned, symbolic system of values, beliefs and attitudes that shapes and influences perception and behavior
Very few obstacles erected by man are successful in halting the ocean.
Dykes, dames, flood-gates, Thames tributary locks, don’t stem the tide; they just block one narrow area of interest.
ENIAC, a wave, turned into a king tide in 1975, when a couple of school leavers added a teletype keyboard and basic to a home hobbyist microcomputer (Altair) that was essentially 19 LEDS with 21 on/off switches.
I remember the seventies; – PdP will be the last computer that any university needs.
Then the eighties and computers became ubiquitous – to the early technology adopters.
And the early adopters, once they unpacked their nice new PC’s discovered they had to write their own software. Basic-A was the available EPROM chip – so everyone wrote basic routines, and began sharing their ideas at impromptu gabfests at computer shows.
A new industry was born, socially developed software.
Consumers became users, then critics, then programmers. It was a closed self-sustaining loop, but a loop with no entry fee beyond an open mind and the willingness to buy a computer and make use of it. Anyone who didn’t have a computer looked at these nerds with amazement. What the hell were they all so excited about.
And any psychiatrist will tell you that it was about exploration, control and above all else, logic. If one typed the wrong key, the program wouldn’t slam the door, storm out of the house and shout from the car window “I’m going to mothers.”
It wouldn’t result in the sack (mostly), nor would it stop the sun coming up tomorrow. The wrong key would mean that the program just wouldn’t work right.
After a few such errors, most consumer/programmers became adept at scanning and correcting their own code and from this perfected code came the household names we now all recognise so well. 20/20, Paradox, Dbase, Borland.
No well you wouldn’t recognize them. They were only there for a while. But like any industry, they started, peaked, sales dropped off and they either brought out a new version or bit the dust.
Why?
Technology. New programmers were writing better software and releasing it for $29.95 as shareware.
The concept of shareware really took off with the advent of the Commercial Internet. If you needed to  do something on your computer, then there was a piece of shareware on Simtel, your local BBS, or Walnut Creek CD-Rom that would pretty much do what you wanted. Some of it was free, some of it was free for a time and some of it you had to pay for from day one, OR suffer reduced functionality.
Shareware. A good business model, for cottage industry programmers, to get their stuff out there and earning a quid. No packaging, no disk required – just upload it to Simtel and wait for the viral distribution to occur.
The social sharing culture was born of innovation, necessity and above all else, a desire to learn, to master the machine and make the damn thing earn its keep.
Gee, this shareware is pretty good stuff. What else can we share? The users asked……….

Presenting an alternative Viewpoint on how file sharing might HELP the software industry and the Computer Industry.

‘In Hungary, they told us that the workers
would never own the means of production.’”
Dr. Charles Simonyi
We have learnt in the last few weeks that :
  1. technology drives sales
  2. availability drives sales
  3. restriction reduces sales
  4. lack of digital availability increases file sharing activity by 39%
Today we are going to change tack a lttle……
Presenting an alternative Viewpoint on how file sharing might HELP the software industry and the Computer Industry.
For the purposes of disambiguation, this article is about file-sharing.
I smile every-time I read how software file-sharing is damaging the computer business, the software business, the game business.
This is a business where the entire industry was built on the basis of sharing, swapping exchanging of ideas, code, programs and operating systems.
Microsoft’s famous PC Dos came from code that was thrown in a rubbish bin, recovered, copied and then later “licensed”. Had someone…. Not “stolen” the code from the rubbish bin, where would we all be today?
The idea that file-sharing could kill the software industry is quite laughable.
In the seventies, software code usually traveled on punch-tape and later floppies.
Unfortunately only universities and banks had punch code printers and readers therefore unless your room-mate was a punch code operator…. The only alternative was to join or form a Computer club. Which started popping up everywhere with the release of the fist hobbyists DIY kit, the Heathkit Altair computer. Operating system? BASIC. No, not a basic operating system, a programming environment called BASIC.
In these computer clubs, the currency was code, sometimes on punch tape, occasionally on a floppy disk but more usually, a “gosub 20, do something really cool, beep, run” written on a scrap of paper or the corner of a coffee shop napkin.
Coffee shops ? Of course we had coffee shops in the seventies. Where do you think all the computer clubs started?
So Koltai, is that when sharing become piracy? Not yet…. We need to sell a few computers first – there has to be something of value created before anyone wants to pirate it commercially.
But before we can create a “clone” we first have to hack (or clean room develop a copy) the IBM BIOS, which judging the amount of “Taiwanese
Clone” PC’s hitting the market in late ’81 was apparently achieved by several companies in Taiwan.
From Wikipedia
In the USA, Columbia Data Products (CDP) introduced the MPC 1600 “Multi Personal
Computer” in June 1982. It was an exact functional copy of the IBM PC model 5150 except for the BIOS
which was clean roomed. IBM had published the bus and BIOS specifications, wrongly assuming that this would be enough to encourage the add-on market and prevent unlicensed copying of the design.

 
The trade in under the counter computer software began with the release of the first “clone” computer.

“Pssst, Buddy, wanna copy of PC Dos 1.0 ?”
There was no choice for early purchasers of Clone computers.

PC Dos was reserved for IBM.
The alternative was the (perceived) dumbed down version of Dos sold by Microsoft as MS Dos 1.0. (.exe instead of .com) and different
utilities.  That’s if you were lucky and lived in a town with a computer store.
IBM Processor 8088 architecture = PC-Dos
Clone Computers 8086 architecture = MS-Dos
Of course in the early days, new operating systems were being released every six months.
QDos, MS-Xenix, Z-DOS, PICK, Beos, CPM/86, MSX Dos1.1, MS-DOS 1.25, PC Dos 1.1, ITT DOS, PC Dos 2.0.
Copies of each were distributed at each computer user club
meeting as we, the users struggled to work with incompatible offerings and restrictions that each operating system and processor platform attempted to force onto us.
Of course this meant that the executables created on one operating system, failed to work on another. Although this was in reality a “feature” of the chipset, in the early days, there were no X86 ports across all processors.
You selected your processor, your operating system and your compiler. Then you wrote your own spreadsheet, word processor and Database,
compiled it and started to be productive.
I must say, it was rather nice to be able to take a hunk of hardware and control how it interfaced with the user by the selection of operating system that came either on a tape or floppy.
The core memory required for MS Dos was only 23K. (For PC Dos it was only 16K).
Whilst users freely swapped programs (they had written themselves) and operating systems as if they were valueless. The reality was that the computer market was small. A PC retailed for over $2,000 dollars and the closest you could get to operational software was Wordstar and 20/20 spreadsheet.
However, every computer reseller offered purchasers a compiler suite at the point of sale.
At first it was the “upgrade” option to include the BasicA EEPROM.
Then it involved to include a variety of compilers, the most popular of which was Turbo Pascal from Borland.
A typical computer sale transaction…..
“Here you’ll need this to make some programs.”
“You mean there aren’t any programs that come with the computer?”
The computer salesman was starting to feel he was loosing the sale…..
“Look, I’ll tell you what, I’ll throw in a “copy” of IBM’s PC Dos. It’s much better than MS Dos. Let me just make you a copy…..”
So software copying in the computer world started for two reasons…
1. To enable the sale of hardware to more persons who would write more software to supply more users with more reasons to buy a computer.
2. A sharing environment where everyone felt sorry for their “computer buddy” who had just forked out so much money for the hardware.
Both reasons are understandable and arguably the basis of a technology in Genesis mode.
Everything changed with the release of (Digital Research) DR Dos in 1986. Dr Dos was seen by the market as a real alternative to MS Dos.
It would allow companies to run multiple “Dos” sessions on a single 80286 and provide users with just dumb (VT-220) terminals;
Suddenly, operating system piracy headed the news. Apparently, DR-Dos made the same kind of system calls to the hardware as MS-Dos and it’as interface “looked like the Parc Xerox GUI which had been copied by Apple”.
Of course, that particular foray failed to getup because all software was forced to address the hardware in a certain fashion if it expected software to be truly portable.
But the piracy meme was successful. The lawyers won the first round. Their efforts at smearing Digital Research worked. Suddenly a pefectly good competitor to Microsoft was wiped off the face of the computer world.
Dealers were told that they could stock EITHER Dos 2.11 OR DR Dos, but not both.
Of course, nothing was ever put in writing, so we only have my empirical memory retelling the annecdote.
This won’t mean anything to most people, so jump down five lines…. Geeks [over 45 - read on]  but in January 1988, we had Rakon UNIX running virtual terminals with DR Dos sessions on OPUS VT220 terminals runing Dos porgrams like Q&A, Lotus 123, Clipper compiled DBASE III accounting software and not just the one terminal, the Espirit OPUS terminals supported two 19.2K serial connections (allowing us to toggle between two virtual server Dos sessions – 1988 !!!!).  All data was on the central server, there were no floppy disks drives of CD-rom drives the user could access….. So in all respects it was a server model better than a stand alone PC. You could even play low res Dos games (Chess).
Was I angry that DR Dos was suddenly pulled off the market? Yes. The world lost the most potenitally successful challenger to the Microsoft empire.
Why? Because Microsoft paid some lawyers a lot of money.
However, the legal action came back and bit them where it hurts in April 2000 with the April 2000 ruling of Judge  Jackson, U.S. District Judge who in his ruling said:
The facts of this case also prove the elements of the forced bundling requirement. Indeed, the Supreme Court has stated that the “essential characteristic” of an illegal tying arrangement is a seller’s decision to exploit its market power over the tying product “to force the buyer into the purchase of a tied product that the buyer either did not want at all, or might have preferred to purchase elsewhere on different terms.”
and….
The Court has already found, based on the evidence in this record, that there are currently no products – and that there are not likely to be any in the near future – that a significant percentage of computer users worldwide could substitute for Intel-compatible PC operating systems without incurring substantial costs. Findings ¶¶ 18-29. The Court has further found that no firm not currently marketing Intel-compatible PC operating systems could start doing so in a way that would, within a reasonably short period of time, present a significant percentage of such consumers with a viable alternative to existing Intel-compatible PC operating systems. Id. ¶¶ 18, 30-32. From these facts, the Court has inferred that if a single firm or cartel controlled the licensing of all Intel-compatible PC operating systems worldwide, it could set the price of a license substantially above that which would be charged in a competitive market – and leave the price there for a significant period of time – without losing so many customers as to make the action unprofitable. Id. ¶ 18. This inference, in turn, has led the Court to find that the licensing of all Intel-compatible PC operating systems worldwide does in fact constitute the relevant market in the context of the plaintiffs’ monopoly maintenance claim. 
A search of literature (computer magazines) in the early eighties finds that it was the lawyers drumming up business that started talking about Piracy and Trademark infringement. It would appear the “Piracy” scare was so that Microsoft could implement per CPU licensing with PC manufacturers.
Interesting. I think Mr. Tom Chan was telling us that essentially there were two type of customers.
Those that wanted the DBASE II /DB-III with manuals and those that couldn’t afford to buy the product with manuals. (Remember, this was before the great internet rush of the mid nineties.) And……. Because he was referring to ASIA and the wages in the Asian countries in the early eighties was pretty abysmal, he has also told us that poorly paid persons in Asia could afford to buy PC’s. At $2500 per IBM PC this didn’t seem very likely.
Anecdotally, I had a computer shop in Darwin in the mid eighties (83-89).
 
Empirically, for every Toshiba, ITT, IBM, Olivetti, Adler, Altos, CCI, brand name system that we sold from the systems division, we sold at least 30 no name brands from the PC Division next door.
The Comsol Sales Manager John, with his two capable assistants, Linda and Fiona. Notice the Toshiba on the left next to the 455 QUME Graphic terminal and the el cheapo clone on the right.. The photo must have been after 1985, there are 12 function keys on the keyboard although the screen on the clone was a monochrome yellow cursor on black background. (I can’t remember the sales managers last name, but I
remember the monitor specs……very very sad)

 

We were mainly a Unix house which meant that we pushed high end systems. But in those days you could do an awful lot with an ITT 286, a copy of Xenix 2.11 and 32 dumb terminals. (Telecom 1100 faults system, so what does a $56,000 80286 with a small database on it look like?)
At first, the no name brands from Taiwan came with no BIOS chips installed, so we had to cook our own BIOS. (The easiest way to cook a bios was to take an EEPROM, Burner and…..).
Every computer store had an EEProm burner. Eventually Taiwan licensed the Phoenix BIOS and the trickle of clones became a flood.
When I was researching this article, I decided to total up  the various numbers of computers on a global basis. From various sources, I discovered that the world passed one billion computers in 2006.
I was confused. I thought we passed one billion computers in about 2000; (Legard (2002) suggested that according to an IDG press release, we passed a billion units in 2002.
Then I saw the stats that the 2006 guestimates were based on…..
1990
1995
2000
2003
2005
2008
USA PC Sales (#M)
9.54
21.4
46.0
48.3
55-57
62-63
Dell
Computer:
USA (#M)
0.143
1.15
9.7
15.5
18-20
23-24
HP &
Compaq:
USA (#M)
0.48
3.87
13.3
10.5
12-13
14-16
WW PC
Sales (#M)
24.2
58
129.6
149.3
180-182
221-225
Dell
Computer: WW (#M)
0.2
1.93
15.1
25.2
31-33
40-43
HP &
Compaq: WW (#M)
1.04
8.2
28
24.4
27-29
34-37
…and
USA Million Units
WW Million Units
USA Value $B
WW Value $B
1981-1985
3.8
5.7
10.5
16.9
1986-1990
28.1
60.3
76.4
181
1991-1995
64.3
172
153
447
1996-2000
162
444
335
1,010
2001-8/2006
267
855
424
1,440
8/1981-8/2006
580
1,540
998
3,100
http://www.c-i-a.com/pr0806.htm

Totally ignoring the Chinese Mexican and Taiwanese contributions to the computer industry’s early days.
In China, the Apple II had been cloned by 1981 (Denis 1989 P.355) with copies (called “The Venus” being sold for around $2500. IBM PC
knockoffs were available for about 7,000 with inventory quantities growing at around 20,000 per month. (This was the official machines.)
The problem was that the Government was in a quandary.
Computers appeared to be important to the west and in fact the seventh “Five Year Plan” was all about building a semi-conductor industry in China. However, wages were lower than the cost of training office workers, so in the early eighties, the computers were made and stored, unused for the most part, waiting
for the compsci graduates to come rolling off the university machine to take advantage of China’s new rapidly growing VLSI IT production capability.
Meanwhile… the unofficial machines were being built on 51 second hand manufacturing lines imported from France in 1983 and these appeared to add another 100,000 to the official number of PC’s in 1984 – yet these machines shipped out via Taiwan based industry contacts and were redistributed via Singapore. Few of these computers saw the USA, most were shipped without DOS, without a BIOS or even a floppy drive. They were intended for the budget PC Dealers market where everything was an add-on option…..
China developed it’s own Chinese character language set for DOS in 1985 however did not opt for Microsoft’s generous $9.50 per cpu licensing agreement, preferring to let the reseller vendors worry about
sourcing an operating system.
The reality was that that the average Chinese worker was paid around 300 US Dollars per annum. Therefore the home PC craze was never going to take off unless the price of PC’s including their operating systems came down dramatically.
In summary, the production of all computers in the USA, according to the Computer Industry Almanac;
PCs based on the original IBM PC architecture have sold 580M units in 25 years worth nearly $B 1,000 in the USA. Worldwide sales of MS-DOS and Windows PCs since August 1981 have surpassed 1.5B units with a value of $B 3,100. The revenue figures include initial hardware sales only and exclude PC software and services.
China wasn’t the only country playing the two loading docks for every manufacturing factory. Mexico appeared to be shipping a lot more PC’s than the officially announced Trade numbers. The Pan American Highway allowed the discreet shipments to head south whilst the official shipments headed North.
By our AP (don’t ask but it’s a pluck guestimate) we estimate over 3.9 billion Official PC’s have been shipped with almost 2.1 billion retired. Retired?
Anecdotally, since 1982, I personally have retired …..(i.e.: placed into storage or junked – not resold): Australia only.
Koltai’s PC’s
Sourced
Retired
ATT&T 3B2,
1982
1986
IBM 5120
1982
1987
IBM AT
1983
1988
Ferranti Challenger
1983
1983
Olivetti 80186,
1983
1983
STAR AT,
1984
1987
UNI-x Clone,
1983
1986
Adler 80186
1984
1987
ITT 286 XL
1983
1991
DRS 30,
1991
1994
DRS 50,
1992
1994
DRS 300,
1989
1994
Fujitsu Pearl Laptop
1994
1997
DRS 3000,
1991
1995
Toshiba 4800
1987
1991
Compaq Laptop
1997
Sun 5 Netra
1995
1999
Sun 20
1994
2000
DRS 400
1989
1995
ACER 30
1991
1993
AST 210
1998
2002
Sony FS…..
1998
2002
Sony C1V
2001
2006
Sony F505
2004
2005
Pentium 2 clones (3)
2002
2003
Pentium 3 clones (4)
2002
2003
NEC Versa
2004
2007
Sony VGNA-190
2003
Dell GX-620
2007
EEPC (2)
2009
Unlisted Computer 1
2009
Unlisted Computer 2
2010
Green highlighted items are still in my possession. (This includes only one of the PC’s from my office, the rest belonged to the company.)

The AT&T, DRS400 (which by the way was the X.400 gateway to Australia for nine months, operating from my home garage converted office), and Sun 20 are really backup work machines that I had at my residence to duplicate and backup office procedures and data. So possibly they shouldn’t be counted; on the other hand, as I paid for them and not some corporation, they get included.
The Compaq laptop is used to resolve Windows compatibility issues (win95) about once a year.
The VGNA is now used purely as a Media centre.
I produce everything I do on the Dell and occasionally the EEPC’s. The unlisted computers just run iterations of numbers.
Therefore in twenty eight years, I personally have retired 34 computers. These are mainly personal machines and not business computers. (Seven replacements were due to coffee spills, lightning storms, electrical brownouts or physical shock (dropping)). The rest were retired either due to speed, or upgrade cost versus replacement cost analysis.
The average retention period by Koltai for a computer is therefore 3.423077 years.
Koltai’s idea of how a CEO should be connected to his work.
(Me, in my office at Norwich house (Level 22 overlooking the Sydney Harbour bridge) in 1995) with 6 PC’s visible and the laptop in my travel case on the floor under the desk. (There is also a vt100 terminal with Telnet access on the desk.)
Err… what about your home ….? OK – here’s home (1997)…. I was a bachelor at the time…. Can you tell? Please note the advanced use of BSD Post-it Notes on the Unix Terminal Screen (just couldn’t get that darn GNU X.11 desktop functioning…. OK – Tetris worked….) :lol: and laptop on the coffee table.
If we use the same number on a global basis (not the number of PC’s, just the retention period as an average, then 1% of all PC users purchased a computer between 1983 and 1985 and likely exchanged/retired it at 3.42 years.
‘If we thereafter allow growth at the official rate of 40% (Gartner estimate from 1981-2000)
per annum, then the total number of PC’s manufactured worldwide is…… 7.8 billion.
So much for the official Gartner and IDG figures. But befiore we kill off the Gartner numbers, lets see if it fits with what we know about Australia.
Here is the Australian Version of the Gartner Formula with some Koltai Variations added in……
And….
Assumptions:
  • 25% upgrade in 36 months
  • 25% in 48 months
  • 25% in 60 months
  • 25% never upgrade
  • 5% of all PC’s are Junked or placed in storage after 36,48 or 60 months
  • 70% of all PC’s are hand me downs or sold after 36, 48 or 60 months.
  • (The average age on eBay for secondhand PC’s has reduced from 52 months to 33 months in the last twelve months.)
  • Mobile phones acquired PC abilities with Bluetooth, 802.11 and Spreadsheet capability (approx 2000)
  • Accidental loss, burglary and damage account for 5.4% of pc replacement per year.
  • Age of PC owners reduces in 2005 with Netbooks down to 12 from 15.
  • 21% of Australians may never purchase a PC or not use it if there is one in the home.
The Average Australian will purchase a new PC or PC capable smart phone every three years giving an average mean of 19 devices per life expectancy cycle.
Yep, the Gartner formula works – a little bit on the high side, but – I like the numbers. (Incidentally, that’s 94 million PC’s that Australians have junked or retired since 1981.)
Of course, now everyone will redo their calculations and say – But we meant PC’s in actual operation.
Note of importance, number of Dos or Windows licences I transferred from one PC to another = zero.
Number of times I didn’t bother to buy Dos or windows with my computers (90%).
Now this is where it gets interesting.
The clones (the unofficial – second loading dock shipped clones) didn’t pay Microsoft a CPU licensing fee.
Out of the 34 computers, only ten had unix variant OS’es , one was CP/M and one was Pick leaving 22 computers of which I only purchased
Dos for about Ten of.
Koltai are you advocating piracy? Nope… please remember the Microsoft CPU licensing up until about version 6, I think from memory which was around 1997.
However, lets just examine what we have read here today.
About 5-6 billion PC’s made.
About 1.5-2 billion in use.
About 1.5 – 2 billion Microsoft licences purchased (200 million in 2008) (not all manufacturers signed up for the CPU licensing option).
An anecdote on the subject of why people file share….
Comment
by Sorefeet August 10, 2008
You guys have it all wrong. Price? It’s a trophy thing. If I
create a hack for a game and make it run better/longer/for less or no money, it
allows to impress the circle. If you trade said game with your peers, you’re
considered an interesting source. Social networking and all that. All kids
collect. Used to be stamps, used to be games, used to be p2p l/ps, bet it’s
zombies soon. It’s a power trip for those “in”.
If you want a more pedagogical answer, the warez and demoscene
worlds were once interlinked, and well known breeding places of todays “game
design talent”. You don’t learn this stuff at any school, not even at the
recent hot ‘games academy’ fad.
So, what I’m saying is.. if you want to build a kingdom, you
have to dispense a bit of power to your entourage..
Microsoft has 88.14% of Operating System market share
1. Windows XP
55.34%
2. Windows 2000
17.23%
3. Windows 98
8.23%
4. Macintosh
8.18%
5. Windows ME
3.67%
6. Linux
3.67%
7. Windows NT
3.67%
8. Macintosh Power PC
3.67%
So what I want to know is quite simple.
If file sharing is supposedly damaging to a companies sales
volumes.
And it would appear that Microsoft MS-DOS and Windows are
the most pirated software in the world.
Then…. if three billion plus copies of DOS and Windows were
pirated. Why is Microsoft the number one Software company in the world. How is that even possile with file sharing apparentely representing according to the numbers we have analysed, guestimated, AP’ed and plucked about 270% of total Microsoft OS sales.
As an item of interest, we estimate that 720 million license have been retired in the western world.
Company
Software Revenues
(M)US$
Software revenue
growth (%yoy)
Total Revenues
(M)US$
Software Revenue
share
File Sharing
Likelihood (Koltai)
Likely at 100%
Microsoft
49,453
10%
61,900
80%
Likely
49,453
IBM
22,089
11%
103,630
21%
Unlikely
Oracle
17,560
17%
22,102
79%
Unlikely
HP
11,604
8%
16,111
72%
Unlikely
Symantec
5,692
8%
6,152
93%
Likely
5,692
Activision Blizzard
4,622
73%
5,032
92%
Likely
4,622
Ignore the chart (it’s from something we’ll be posting in the future, however it’s an extract from the list of the top 100 software
company’s in the world showing revenues from software.)
Resources:
Old, used, and out-of-print Microsoft® MS-DOS® for Sale
References:
Microsoft sales fall for first time in 23 years
Software giant revenue drops 6% and earnings plummet 32% as PC sales continue to weaken. http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/23/technology/microsoft_earnings/index.htm
Cliffski’s Blog » Genuine call for emails from pirates
Dedrick, Jason, Kraemer, Kenneth L., & Palacios, Juan J.(1999). Impacts of Economic Integration on the Computer
Sector in Mexico and the United States
. UC Irvine: Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations. Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1tx1b7×7
Software sold abroad may stay copy protectedInfoWorld- 5 Jan 1987 Vol. 8, Nos. 52-1 – 80 pages
Microsoft defends DOS licensing
Legard (2002) PC Sales Surpass One Billion (IDG News Service) http://www.pcworld.com/article/102386/pc_sales_surpass_one_billion.html
Denis Fred Simon, Merle Goldman (1989) “Science and technology in post-Mao China
Volume 5 of Harvard contemporary China Harvard Univ Asia Center,
1989ISBN0674794753, 9780674794757