As a Polish engineering student I feel strong urge to rotfl after reading this post...wait a minute...
...
...Done.
"good engineering practices" from the rest of the world??? Please mind, that good engineering practices usually develop when other parts of a good design and construction are limited or unavailable (e.g. money, materials, pre-made designs), so the engineers really have to think everything over to avoid excessive material loss. All of my professors say that when Poland was firmly behind the Iron Curtain engineers have been much better (aaah, those good old days...).
When someone was constructing, let's say, microwave transceiver, he could not use ready ICs from West Germany and newly designed MCX connectors from France or anywhere else due to embargo on modern technology and had to find his own way. That's why Polish electronic engineers were sometimes praised for their skills: if you've had access only to uA741 you've just had to be a good engineer to make anything of it (I mean designing any device using only operation amplifiers). Of course, in fact, they've had access to many kinds of electronic elements, not just opamps
;-)
.
Some technologies, like, for example, production of
HgCdTe detectors with epitaxial growth were developed in Poland (in 1980's) and became very popular across the world thanks to their low cost, because they were designed by people with constant lack of funds but with many ideas.
IMO, the poorer the country, the smarter the engineers and scientists. Poland has nothing to export but minds
:-)
Perhaps security was a guard with a gun.
- oh man, I won't even comment this...
after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there may not have been any money or drive to update the system.
- I don't know how much of geography and history have you been taught where you live (if you're from US you may not even know the difference between Italy and France
;-) ), but it was Soviet Union that used to be draining goods and money from their satellite countries not the other way. Just think about it - what is the purpose of having a satellite country if you have to pump money to them not to your people?
P.S. Sorry for my English, I hope that you won't try to find corellation between my language skills and Polish engineers' "good engineering" capability.
And one other thing: weren't the early remote car alarm systems (from the same time that Lodz trams' automatic switching system was designed) easily hackable too?
