RE: _IBM and the Holocaust_

From: Josh Martin (martin.907@osu.edu)
Date: Tue Feb 20 2001 - 23:38:56 MST


Mike Lorrey wrote:
> Frankly I find this to be rather a lame sort of blamology. IBM
> was not the only maker of card sorters in that
> day, and IBM card sorters were also of immense importance to the
> Enigma decoding programs at Bletchley Park, as
> well as Richard Feynman's work on doing calculations for the
> Manhattan Project.

The story of this in _Surely your Joking, Mr. Feynman_ is great. He had a
bunch of high school kids running the machine, and they were, in part, one
of the reasons we got the bomb done when we did.

Not that the bomb was necessarily a good thing, but I think this shows one
of the problems with today's education system: Kids obviously CAN work to
very high standards and accomplish a lot, if they are given the opportunity,
but they are not given it. They are bored in class, and bored flipping
burgers. At least I was, and a lot of smart people I knew were.

Solve this, and we solve some of the Script Kiddie/"Hacker" virus problems.

josh



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