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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

#171

Post by ghaff »

shusaku wrote: post #30
chris_wot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why did they take the material? If you don’t want it, then don’t take it.

In the first post he absolves a certain guy, so I’d guess it’s just a matter of someone in the org thinking they were valuable, only for the next guy to come to a different conclusion.

It's very easy to imagine one guy being enthusiastic about this and possibly even thinking that digitizing the issues wouldn't be a big deal. And then after he moved on, someone else going What is all this crap? Not even knowing where it came from. And sure as heck not about to undertake a large-scale digitization project.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#172

Post by Semaphor »

digitalsushi wrote: post #153
Semaphor wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally the first result on the site I checked [0], solid wood table on sale for 339 €. Do you want to move the goalposts even further? [0]: https://www.otto.de/p/gozos-esstisch-scots-pine-series-essti...

As a woodworker I would love to grab a goalpost and drag it 30 meters further down the field - pine is not wood, pine is an organic cardboard with superior strength and durability to cardboard, but is otherwise the same material. (You did make your point though. I just really vehemently dislike pine as a building material for furniture)

In that case, I’ll happily report my bed being made from wild oak ;)

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#173

Post by Brian_K_White »

ghaff wrote: post #165
gtirloni wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd expect people working in a organization focused on preserving or promoting vintage stuff to be the most enthusiastic about that material and handle it with great care. My mom couldn't care less about computers and she called me to ask if I wanted to keep some floppy disks before she threw them out.

>My mom couldn't care less about computers and she called me to ask if I wanted to keep some floppy disks before she threw them out. And I've thrown out a ton of floppies and old games. You can't save everything just because it had some meaning to you once. Enthusiastic or not, dealing with boxes and boxes of old magazines means spending lots of money and/or lots of time which is a high bar. (Though, as I wrote, they…

Throwing out your own stuff, that was only ever yours, not merely given into your custody, has absolutely no bearing or relation to this story.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#174

Post by ghaff »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #173
ghaff wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My mom couldn't care less about computers and she called me to ask if I wanted to keep some floppy disks before she threw them out. And I've thrown out a ton of floppies and old games. You can't save everything just because it had some meaning to you once. Enthusiastic or not, dealing with boxes and boxes of old magazines means spending lots of money and/or lots of time which is a high bar. (Though, as I wrote, they…

Throwing out your own stuff, that was only ever yours, not merely given into your custody, has absolutely no bearing or relation to this story.

I think you're way more optimistic about the record-keeping and level of organization of a group like this than I am.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#175

Post by ghaff »

fencepost wrote: post #56
pureheartlover wrote: post #39

Wouldn't the authors or publishers have the original copies somewhere?

Not necessarily and it depends a lot on what the materials were. IEEE publications were mentioned, it was founded in 1963 and there's a good chance that anything from the first 10 years may no longer be in archives unless donated back by a recipient.

I'd probably have more faith that IEEE publications still existed somewhere in some form. But the vast majority of publications either don't exist at all or they exist only in physical form someplace and aren't readily accessible.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#176

Post by dillera »

amichlin wrote: post #160

Again, former VCFederation (Mid Atlantic and National) volunteer here. I was only a volunteer when this donation came in and was part of the team that made sure this donation got a good home later on. No one involved at either end of this is still actively involved with VCF, so the OP is taking an organization task to because of a lack of institutional knowledge. I offered to privately explain what really happened on…

Hilarious that the 1st person other-side account of this bizarre cry for attention from Scott is being down-voted here.

Scott may feel he needs some attention-- so dredging up something he already posted a few years ago is somehow a good faith folksy rumination that will help people? I wish him well if he believes that.

Kids: Pay your Taxes!

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#177

Post by xoa »

amichlin wrote: post #160

Again, former VCFederation (Mid Atlantic and National) volunteer here. I was only a volunteer when this donation came in and was part of the team that made sure this donation got a good home later on. No one involved at either end of this is still actively involved with VCF, so the OP is taking an organization task to because of a lack of institutional knowledge. I offered to privately explain what really happened on…

>Again, former VCFederation (Mid Atlantic and National) volunteer here. I was only a volunteer when this donation came in and was part of the team that made sure this donation got a good home later on. No one involved at either end of this is still actively involved with VCF, so the OP is taking an organization task to because of a lack of institutional knowledge. I offered to privately explain what really happened on Twitter (X) and was blocked as a result and made out to be accusing OP of being a liar. I only want to interject the facts as I know them and maybe offer up a couple of opinions.

>and made out to be accusing OP of being a liar

I have no specific knowledge here at all, but I am capable of reading and remembering events >"I was actually there. Nothing in this blog post is factual."

>"so I'll correct myself say almost the entirety of the blog post is false."

You called him a liar and now are trying to pull some /woe is me people are twisting my words/? As the top reply you never responded to said, it's perfectly conceivable this was all a result of a very poor series of communications. But you've spent a lot of words over the last 24h to try to cast shade on a well known apparently dedicated archivist sharing a very simple, straight forward personal experience he felt was negative and calling him a liar without actually addressing the substance. You don't show the communications didn't happen. You make appeals to incredulity ("Does anyone really think it would have been donated to a warehouse without climate control by the ocean if there was any hint of archiving needed") when according to the blog ("To make this donation, I paid for the containers, filled them, put many issues in bags, and then rented a truck to drive them the roughly 70 miles to the VCF headquarters in Wall, NJ. There I dropped them off and went home. This was roughly 2017.") yeah it does sound like he was serious about archiving it, and it's not at all clear that it would have been clear to him that dropping it off at the HQ would mean it would permanently live forever in a non-cc warehouse next to the ocean.

The original blog was pretty measured and to the point. Just his feelings, his perspective, and why he was making a choice to people who follow him rather then leaving it quiet. He's clearly still quite upset but didn't say the whole org was trash or that nobody should ever go. It may have all been a bad misunderstanding and leadership screw up that has left some bad feelings which would be too bad but can't always be fixed except maybe by time. But man are you doing a shitty job of making your case.

----

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40007300

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#178

Post by pavel_lishin »

rightbyte wrote: post #113
pavel_lishin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like going to estate sales. Sometimes you find interesting things. But mostly, it's just piles of, frankly, crap. And in a weird way, it's sort of helping me deal with some of my tendencies to collect crap. Once I'm dead, 75% of it will be thrown away by someone hired to deal with the estate, maybe 50% of the rest will be sold, and the rest will once again go in the garbage. That screwdriver I'm keeping even though…

> That screwdriver I'm keeping even though it doesn't work well? It's going in the landfill anyway. Might as well go tomorrow, as in 50 years. Hold your horses. You need that one for abusive usecases. My favourite flathead is both bent and chipped.

Sure, but I don't think I need two phillips' heads that would be more useful as dagger side-arms from the 15th century than they would be for screwing or unscrewing anything.

I finally got fed up and replaced them and threw them away after I grabbed two in a row that didn't actually get the job done.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#180

Post by xoa »

dangus wrote: post #170
amichlin wrote: post #160

Again, former VCFederation (Mid Atlantic and National) volunteer here. I was only a volunteer when this donation came in and was part of the team that made sure this donation got a good home later on. No one involved at either end of this is still actively involved with VCF, so the OP is taking an organization task to because of a lack of institutional knowledge. I offered to privately explain what really happened on…

I think the silliest part about this “saga” is that Jason is leading a one-man boycott at his own detriment. He’s depriving himself of a social community meeting place for his passion because his donation to the organization that facilitates those meetups wasn’t put to some kind of completely unspecified use. > A number of years later, I contacted the Vintage Computer Federation to ask how the magazines were doing, i…

This has to be one of the lamest, or if you prefer "silliest", possible responses.

>If he wants the materials to be part of a project, he should have spent the time needed to make them into a project. But really, Jason doesn’t know what to do with them, that’s why he donated them in the first place.

>It’s not much different than dropping off an attic full of miscellaneous paintings to the Met and expecting them to put them in an exhibit.

>If you want to make a qualified donation, make a qualified donation. Write up a contract that tells the organization what it’s allowed to do with your donation. Otherwise, anything is fair game.

First, as he wrote and of course you read, that is indeed a lesson he has taken:

>"Finally, this is all relatively minor in terms of the work I do and projects I focus on, an event that brought me some fury but which has mostly played the part of filed under “life lessons”. [...] My conversations with people and organizations I shift materials to are much longer, much more involved, and with much more contingencies as a result of this event, and things are better for it.

So apparently he's doing exactly as you say in response. He, rightly or wrongly, felt he'd trusted where he shouldn't have and will be more explicit about expectations going forward. That's good?

Second, trying to shift to legalism from a social complaint is crappy. He never said it wasn't "fair game" or that he'd be talking to his lawyer or any such thing. He never even implies there was a contract to the contrary, that didn't have every "right" in the legal sense to do whatever they wished. It was a terms-free donation. But just because the law lets you do something doesn't mean you're free of social reactions. If people feel you've treated them badly, even if it is totally allowed, they may exercise their freedom to tell others about it and refuse to associate with you further. Others may then react in turn, or not depending on how they judge the event. "You didn't have a contract so haha too bad for you" is not the greatest take in the world.

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