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I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

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Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#61

Post by whartung »

Aeolun wrote: post #4

Why would you take all this stuff only to toss it all out? Though to he fair, it seems the person that took it was pushed out and replaced? In which case, why, if you do not take this stuff, would you work for a VCF?

Perhaps the policy changed.

Storing stuff takes space and effort. Cataloging even more so. Making it available to others is a jump in magnitude.

Eventually, it can become untenable.

Organizations like this tend to not lack donors. What they lack is the capacity to cope with donations. Time, labor, space, money are all finite, regardless of their mission.

Even the Salvation Army will refuse things like furniture. It’s not carte blanche. That said, I’ll donate even ratty clothing to the SA because I know they’re at the tail end of consumer product life, they inspect and sort all the incoming clothing, and their discards end up bundled for recycle or other purposes.

I donate to let them have first crack at it with their expertise rather than condemn it to a landfill directly. Give that old ‘92 Comdex t-shirt one last chance.

I don’t know anything in detail about VCF. I don’t know if the IEEE has archives of everything already.

I know there’s an effort to scan several hundred Computer Shopper magazines. I know there’s someone out there who has spent a great deal of time setting up a system to scan a very large stack of DEC VAX microfiche.

I guess its a shame these magazines didn’t fall into the hands of someone with the zeal these other folks have for their projects.

I have also learned to not question the motives and projects of folks in the vintage computer scene. Not my time, not my project, who am I to judge.

It was with a bit of a heavy heart when my large collection of Dr. Dobbs magazines went into the recycling bin.

When I cleaned out my grandfather’s house, I came back with (among other things) several dozen Popular Mechanics magazines from the 40s. They were all 200+ pages. Talk about a snapshot of a different world. But after 10+ years sitting in a box in the garage, and a house move later, I kept three and the rest went into the blue bin.

Which brings me to my final point. If you have a collection, if you have any care about its disposition, you should do that yourself to other enthusiasts that may share your interests. Because your heirs, or the people task with cleaning up after your gone, will likely just put it in a large dumpster to be carted away.

But then, even if you do get it to others, it may well end up in landfill anyway.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#62

Post by kazinator »

AlbertCory wrote: post #3

I was in Google Patent Litigation, and we actively collected old stuff, for possible use as prior art. I even went to Beryl Nelson's house before she died to collect her old Bell System Technical Journals. A lot of old stuff has no value to anyone. That can be hard to accept, but it's true. Even old wood furniture -- no one wants it. Old PC or Byte Magazines? Forget it; they're all over.

> A lot of old stuff has no value to anyone. That can be hard to accept, but it's true.

Sure, but this is some kind of "vintage computer fest", who are supposed to understand that old stuff has value, and who are entrusted with it, and not just given it to dispose of. The very word "vintage" in their name should mean something.

If you can't find it a home, as the donor intended, call that person to take it back.

If that person just wanted the stuff gone, they would not have organized it into bins, and would have driven to their closest paper recycling place.

These VCF people look like total dickheads here, any way you look at it.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#63

Post by toast0 »

somnic wrote: post #14
AlbertCory wrote: post #3

I was in Google Patent Litigation, and we actively collected old stuff, for possible use as prior art. I even went to Beryl Nelson's house before she died to collect her old Bell System Technical Journals. A lot of old stuff has no value to anyone. That can be hard to accept, but it's true. Even old wood furniture -- no one wants it. Old PC or Byte Magazines? Forget it; they're all over.

It would've been courteous to offer it back to the donor, if they weren't equipped or willing to archive or distribute it. I'm guessing that's probably not standard practice, but surely it's common for people donate things to be archived because they're in some way important to the donor.

I agree, but that also requires cataloging the donation somehow so that the donor's contact information is associated. If it all lived in the boxes until it was removed (however it was) then it would be easy to have said 'hey, we can't use this, and we can't store it, we're planning to rid ourselves of it, can you help us find it a new home?' Especially if the donor had placed contact info inside or on the boxes.

But there's lots of ways that information may not filter to the big pile of old magazines disintegrating in the salt air.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#64

Post by fiforpg »

The way negation is concealed in the middle of that title reminded me of Zizek philosophizing about subtleties of the negative: continue to no longer attend, coffee without milk vs coffee without cream, and so on, and so on.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uuTkuy9D5lY

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#66

Post by skissane »

cortesoft wrote: post #44
skissane wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't throw away the physical paper copies just because something has been scanned. In any large collection of scanned documents, you are going to get scanning errors/etc – you can catch a lot of these with quality control, but some will always slip through the cracks. (And, volunteer efforts to scan old computer documentation often don't have the time and resources for the best quality control.) If the origin…

Where are you going to store the paper? And keep it from degrading?

Obviously I'm describing the ideal situation, and sometimes practical realities mean we have to compromise on the ideal.

Still, as much as is practical, we should try to avoid throwing physical documents out even if we know they have been scanned.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#67

Post by AlbertCory »

wmf wrote: post #42
accrual wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even old wood furniture -- no one wants it. Old PC or Byte Magazines? Forget it; they're all over. I think the former is pretty true, but old PC magazines are still important to keep around. For one, they can be digitized to take up virtually no physical space (unlike furniture). Secondly, once digitized and OCR'd to make searchable, they're a valuable resource for finding out when certain products or technologies…

I think the point is that it's already been digitized. All of it. The stuff in your attic isn't a valuable historic artifact; it's deep in the trough of no value.

Exactly that. The major magazines have been done already.

If you have something obscure, there's a good chance it hasn't.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#68

Post by skissane »

tdeck wrote: post #36
Aeolun wrote: post #4

Why would you take all this stuff only to toss it all out? Though to he fair, it seems the person that took it was pushed out and replaced? In which case, why, if you do not take this stuff, would you work for a VCF?

Getting rid of books is part of running a library, I wouldn't be surprised if this kind of thing is part of running a museum or similar organization. That said, there are so many collectors out there I feel it would be better to at least try to find a home, even if it means selling them. It's easy for me to say that because I don't have to actually do it.

> Getting rid of books is part of running a library

It depends on what kind of library we are talking about.

Local public libraries, K-12 school libraries – they throw out books all the time. They have quite limited space, so they can't keep books which are no longer relevant to their target audience.

National libraries, research libraries of leading universities – many of them rarely or never throw books out. I remember, when I was a university student, finding IBM 1400 manuals sitting on the shelves in the stacks. They are probably still sitting there. I believe they turned their last 1400 off in the 1970s.

I remember borrowing a book, and according to the due date stamp inside its cover, the last person to borrow it before me, had done so 40 years prior. You could tell the books that hadn't been borrowed in a long time, because they still had punch cards in them, from back when the library had used punch cards to track book borrowing. If you actually borrowed such a book, they'd remove the punched card and discard it as part of the borrowing process. I bet if I went back today (20+ years later), there would still be books with punched cards in them.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#69

Post by AlbertCory »

imgabe wrote: post #24
AlbertCory wrote: post #3

I was in Google Patent Litigation, and we actively collected old stuff, for possible use as prior art. I even went to Beryl Nelson's house before she died to collect her old Bell System Technical Journals. A lot of old stuff has no value to anyone. That can be hard to accept, but it's true. Even old wood furniture -- no one wants it. Old PC or Byte Magazines? Forget it; they're all over.

Nobody wanting old wood furniture is a boon for people looking to get nice furniture on the cheap. Check Facebook marketplace, craigslist, wherever people sell used things near you. Furniture doesn't really wear out, so other than a few scuffs and dings it will probably be just like new (except for things like couches or recliners). I managed to get a Henredon dresser that retails for something like $4000 new for $40…

I know people who've found this out the hard way, and I have, too:

If you offer it for free, someone will take it. But asking ANY money is agreeing to wait a long, long time.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#70

Post by AlbertCory »

coobird wrote: post #21
underlogic wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> What is this obsession with the past and the early days of computing? The reason why people don't cherish these types of things is they are rational. Technology is about tomorrow. It's not about yesterday This reply hanging off a thread about prior art is telling. As surprising as it may be, the past can tell a lot about the future, as the past was present at a point, and the future is now. Take an example about AI…

> a thread about prior art

since I wrote that: it's actually pretty rare that a defendant can actually use a piece of prior art in a case, but there's always a hope that ONE time, you will.

The other difficulty is that lawyers and jurors will make fun of anything that's too old. I know, it isn't fair, but you do have to overcome a built-in bias against ancient stuff.

I realize you're not talking about litigation, but that was what I meant.

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