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Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

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Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#101

Post by h2odragon »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #18
mindcrime wrote: post #14

This... is fugging amazing. No, seriously. It really is. Those of you who are too young to remember the heyday of Computer Shopper won't get it (probably) but that magazine was ... well, as the article says, practically a "bible" to some of us. There was NOTHING like finding the new issue on the news-stand, buying it, and rushing home to pore over the ads, looking for a sweet new motherboard, some RAM, maybe a Sound…

I think what a lot of younger people also don’t realize is how gigantic a single issue of computer shopper was. They were as thick as phone books with thin weight pages. I remember multiple issues being well into the thousands of pages.

I used to use old ones as rifle target backstops. .22LR would not penetrate a single issue.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#102

Post by ibiza »

rtkwe wrote: post #98

Every time I see an archival process like this I'm amazed at all the effort and wonder if we'll ever get something like the process described in "Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge where a library is archived by essentially shredding the books and blowing that shredded material through a tube stuffed with high speed high quality cameras and just gluing them all back together in software. It's a very fun book that cranks u…

That's essentially how DNA sequencing works. The longest human chromosome (chr1) has about 250M bases. The DNA samples are sonicated to split them into small sequences, and then sequenced en mass 100-300bps at a time. The results are then reassembled into contigs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_sequencing#High-throughput...

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#104

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

VincentEvans wrote: post #86

What is the value of digitizing computer shopper?

Apart from nostalgia, it contains a staggering amount of information about historical PC pricing and hardware availability that (to my knowledge) isn't really documented anywhere else. Sure, Wikipedia can tell you the official launch date of the Intel Pentium, but Computer Shopper can tell you when the price actually dropped to something reasonable, when cheap motherboards for it started pouring out of no-name manufacturers, when vendors stopped bothering to advertise 486 hardware, etc..

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#105

Post by rbanffy »

> The cheap, cheap paper is a nightmare to run through a scanner

Not to mention having a faint mirror image of the other side. You need a dark background and a lot of light on the front to catch as little of it as possible.

And, then, one could add some smarts to try to align and subtract the image of the other side of the page to get an even cleaner image.

Now, just imagine if they kept an archive of their photo plates (or, better for later issues, PDF copies). By 2009 that's the very least one should have.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#106

Post by rbanffy »

akudha wrote: post #69
bane wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've said it before, The IA is a crown jewel of the internet. But now I'll add "and God Bless Jason Scott". This might be one of the most important historical pricing repositories that track tech trends ever produced when it's done. Imagine tracking the weekly per-MB prices of hard drives or even more volatile DRAM from 1979 to 2009. And then there's tracking the emergence and transition between technologies, correla…

I work very long hours for the Internet Archive, and I am making a huge difference in the world working for them. It wouldn’t be right or useful for me to take on any other job. I also don’t want to be doing something like making “stuff” that I sell or otherwise speculate into some market. Leave aside I have these documentaries to finish, and time has to be short. from http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5251 In a wo…

Saint Jason Scott of the Internet is how the machines will remember him.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#107

Post by rbanffy »

h2odragon wrote: post #101
shiftpgdn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what a lot of younger people also don’t realize is how gigantic a single issue of computer shopper was. They were as thick as phone books with thin weight pages. I remember multiple issues being well into the thousands of pages.

I used to use old ones as rifle target backstops. .22LR would not penetrate a single issue.

It's very brave to mention such heinous crimes in this discussion.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#108

Post by rbanffy »

ibiza wrote: post #102
rtkwe wrote: post #98

Every time I see an archival process like this I'm amazed at all the effort and wonder if we'll ever get something like the process described in "Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge where a library is archived by essentially shredding the books and blowing that shredded material through a tube stuffed with high speed high quality cameras and just gluing them all back together in software. It's a very fun book that cranks u…

That's essentially how DNA sequencing works. The longest human chromosome (chr1) has about 250M bases. The DNA samples are sonicated to split them into small sequences, and then sequenced en mass 100-300bps at a time. The results are then reassembled into contigs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_sequencing#High-throughput...

True, but you wouldn't do that to the very last one chromosome in existence.

Some of these tomes might well be the last copy out there.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#109

Post by rbanffy »

modernerd wrote: post #49
noisy_boy wrote: post #15

> debinding When I was in school, there was a binding shop nearby which had a huge machine that looked pretty much like a guillotine, only shallower, that just sliced through thick books like butter. They stuck the book in a vice grip, turned a wheel which brought that beautiful sharp heavy blade down on the hopeless book stuck in the grip below and the paper shavings just blossomed out of the other side as the blade…

Hydraulic drive paper cutters are great for high-volume print finishing (I used several in print production for about two years), but I’d be wary of them for this use case: - Waste is high. To trim off a spine, you likely have to take more of the margin than you’d like (if you trim too close to the edge of a glued spine, the risk is higher that you may bludgeon the stack of pages under pressure instead of cutting it)…

What if instead of cutting, we sanded them? The pressure on the surfaces would be smaller and it could remove just enough to debind the volume.

Re: Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami

#110

Post by h2odragon »

rbanffy wrote: post #107
h2odragon wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to use old ones as rifle target backstops. .22LR would not penetrate a single issue.

It's very brave to mention such heinous crimes in this discussion.

I should brag on my 1988 - 1996 complete run of "PC Magazine" too
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