How is an AK-47 like a QWERTY keyboard?

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/?last_story=/tech/h tww/2007/06/01/ak_47/

Seriously, the linked article is dated 1 June 2007. The World Bank policy paper it covers is from April 2007 (http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDS ContentServer/IW3P/IB/2007/04/13/000016406_2007041 3145045/Rendered/PDF/wps4202.pdf).

Quote from the paper (also quoted in the salon article):

The AK-47's ubiquity [in conflicts in third world countries] could alternatively be explained as a result of a path dependent process. Economic historians recognize that an inferior product may persist when a small but early advantage becomes large over time and builds up a legacy that makes switching costly (David 1975). In the case of the AK-47 that early advantage may be that as a Soviet invention it was not subject to patent and so could be freely copied.

Either this patent story is a joke, or Sergei Ivanov is spending too much time on teh internets...

I'm not Christian. I'm just tolerant of them.

You, on the other hand, are an unapologetic bigot, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

What if someone had an extra million and a half US$ lying around, and decided to pick up a T-Rex, just to train a team of mainframers? How much time are we talking about? My only experience with a mainframe came at BMC, where I was used to help a group of mainframers connect up to the Big Iron through a PC running Japanese OS/2. Loved that green screen.