the UNIX v4 tape reminded me of this story by Ali Akurgal about Turkish bureaucracy:
Do you know what the unit of software is? A meter! Do you know why? In 1992, we did our first software export at Netaş. We wrote the software, pressed a button, and via the satellite dish on the roof, at the incredible speed of 128 kb/s, we sent it to England. We sent the invoice by postal mail. $2M arrived at the bank. 3-4 months passed, and tax inspectors came. They said, “You sent an invoice for $2M?” “Yes,” we said. “This money has been paid?” they asked. “Yes,” we said. “But there is no goods export; this is fictitious export,” they said! So we took the tax inspectors to R&D and sat them in front of a computer. “Would you press this ‘Enter’ key?” we asked. One of them pressed it, then asked, “What happened?” “You just made a $300k export, and we’ll send its invoice too, and that will be paid as well,” we said. The man felt terrible because he had become an accomplice! Then we explained how software is written, what a satellite connection is, and how much this is worth. They said, “We understand, but there has to be a physical goods export; that’s what the regulations require.” So we said: “Let’s record this software onto tape (there were no CDs back then—nor cassettes; we used ½-inch tapes) and send that.” Happy to have found a solution, they said, “Okay, record it and send it.” The software filled two reels, which were handed to a customs broker, who took them to customs and started the export procedure. The customs officer processed things and at one point asked, “Where are the trucks?” The broker said, “There are no trucks—this is all there is,” and pointed to the tape reels on the desk. The customs officer said, “These two envelopes can’t be worth $2M; I can’t process this.” We went to court, an expert committee examined whether the two reels were worth $2M. Fortunately, they ruled that they were, and we were saved from the charge of fictitious export. The same broker took the same two reels to the same customs officer, with the court ruling, and restarted the procedure. However, during the process, the unit price, quantity, and total price of the exported goods had to be entered—as per the regulations. To avoid dragging things out further, they looked at the envelope, saw that it contained tape, estimated how many meters of tape there are on one reel, and concluded that we had exported 1k to 2k meters of software. So the unit of software became the meter.
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André Polykanine
in reply to joomy • • •Witold Kowalik
in reply to André Polykanine • • •In Polish we also use the term of weight towards bytes.
When I was a teen in modem era, the term ciężko przepchnąć ( hard to push ) was also commonly used to describe the relation between the weight of the upload and the channel speed when sending big files.
André Polykanine
in reply to Witold Kowalik • • •Mark Dominus
in reply to joomy • • •I once read a story about the people writing the software for the NASA Apollo missions. There was a functionary in charge of weight accounting, who came to them and asked how much the software would weigh.
They told him it weighted nothing, but the functionary had heard *that* one before and insisted—everything had to be accounted down to the last ounce. He demanded to see it.
They showed him a stack of punched cards, and he was triumphant. “You see,” he said smugly, “it doesn't weigh only ‘nothing’!”
“No, you misunderstand,” they replied. “The cards aren't going on the spacecraft. Only the holes.”