asciilifeform: mats: i assume you learned something from the bbet story.
asciilifeform: mats: i cannot answer for the former, i have 0 control of it.
asciilifeform: mats et al: there are two s.nsa's. there is the mpex asset, which you were prolly asking about, and there is my actual work, which is to 0 extent actually enabled by the ~450 btc in the piggy, and will continue even if mircea_popescu one day drums me out of the chan
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: pretty sure ms flight was written by 1 guy and they purchased it
asciilifeform: we had a joystick, funnily, but it never worked, brother bought it at outdoor blackmarket, we could find no port to plug it in 'iskra'. then in usa we ended up with 'commodore' and guess what - that thing fit...
asciilifeform: it isn't as if library has own monkey scanning physical fishwrap.
asciilifeform: actually simpler than you think. most of the microfilm in american libs was supplied from just a few reproduction houses, and they in turn, from the orig publisher
asciilifeform: iirc rough bio of mr p: went to engineering school, dropped out to sell ibm pc xt clones in early '90s, made megatonne of megabux, got into lsd, went off to write (at first short stories, for phree) then b00kz etc.
