Sunday, February 23, 2014

"Government Quality and Productivity: Success Stories"

I was starting on Spring cleaning early looking for books to donate at the local library book sale and ran across Henry Lefevre "Government Quality and Productivity: Success Stories"

 
Not to be snarky, but with that title, cynics might think the book is only 1 page long. It was printed in 1992 and is basically a compendium of articles from apple polishing government bureaucrats padding their resumes with articles that nobody voluntarily reads. The most amusing article I found was in Chapter 3 and written by the editor, Henry L. Lefevre: "Productivity-Microcomputers and the Government". It's an article published for the 1982 ASQC Quality Congress. Lefevre, in Admiral Stockdale manner, asks: "What are Microcomputers?" 
 




Lefevre answers his rhetorical question:

Microcomputers are best known as "home computers." Name brands include TRS-80 (Radio Shack), Apple II, PET, ATARI, and Texas Instruments.


















They can be used for games such as Star Trek and Star Wars
 

Of course nerds are going to reference Star Trek and Star Wars. For my undergrad degree, I did work study at the ASU College of Education, and their software library only included boring educational games, like the now Facebook famous Oregon Trail,  but didn't include the apparently awesome Star Wars:
 









or [computers] can be used to improve productivity. Most micrcomputers have CPUs with 4 to 64K capacity, and most of them use 5 1/4-inch floppy disks for peripheral storage.


Of course now about the only use for obsolete floppies is pimping out rides:



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