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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

#131

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

underlogic wrote: post #11
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.

[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

The full stupidity of this is only clear when you realise that almost everything that is considered "technology" today was invented between the 1950s and 1970s. Most of what is invented today is about refinement and scaling of ideas that were developed many decades ago.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#132

Post by pyb »

MaanuAir wrote: post #127
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…

Some French people spent the time to digitize an impressive amount of French magazines: https://www.abandonware-magazines.org/ I don’t know for other countries though.

A few of these French magazines have cult status these days : Tilt, etc. I wonder if that's the case in the English-speaking magazine world.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#133

Post by philpem »

telmnstr wrote: post #58
germinator wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised how little of the niche pre-internet stuff is digitized. There are some exceptions (national-circulation newspapers, some English-language books), but it's a minority of what's been published.

Also a question of how long stuff will really stay around on the internet.

Depends how many FTP sites it's mirrored on.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#135

Post by f1shy »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #131
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 The full stupidity of this is only clear when you realise that almost everything that is considered "technology" today was invented between the 1950s and 1970s. Most of what is invented today is about refinement a…

If not undoing mistakes from the 90’s…

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#136

Post by philpem »

wolpoli wrote: post #16

> I also want to take this moment to clearly state that Evan Koblentz, the director of the Vintage Computer Federation for many years, who took the original donation, had absolutely no say or part in this pulping of historical magazines, having been driven out of the organization years before. Sounds like new staff came in and they decided to clean things up, but decided to keep the plastic boxes.

I had no idea who this guy was but did a web search to fill myself in and all this turned up ...

https://lists.vcfed.org/pipermail/vcf-midatlantic/2019-Decem...

Allegedly he'd quit three times in one year: https://lists.vcfed.org/pipermail/vcf-midatlantic/2019-Decem...

https://lists.vcfed.org/pipermail/vcf-midatlantic/2019-Decem...

I dunno, the whole damn situation stinks, but it feels like there's a hell of a lot more going on here than just a box of magazines.

I don't really have the time to look into this more, it's not my group. My involvement was to reply as (I thought) a friend to ask both sides to chill and get around a table, and the outcome of that was that Jason opted to berate and belittle me. We'd worked together in the past (long time ago) on a preservation project and over time he's burned bridges with a lot of the people who worked on that.

I have no idea what's going on with Jason these days, but I hope he's okay.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#137

Post by flohofwoe »

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.

> Even old wood furniture -- no one wants it. Old PC or Byte Magazines? Forget it; they're all over.

It's always been like that unfortunately, but wait just a couple of centuries, and it will become valuable ;)

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#138

Post by arexxbifs »

weinzierl wrote: post #126
arexxbifs wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a bit harsh to judge an entire event by the conduct of a single speaker, but to each their own, and all that. To answer your question, yes, people are still writing malware for old systems. They don't even have to be network connected: computer viruses can spread perfectly fine from other media as well. People still send each other floppies in the mail. It's not as prevalent as on modern mainstream systems of c…

"Seems a bit harsh to judge an entire event by the conduct of a single speaker [..]" The answer was extremely rude. Had they said, they got rid of the documents, because they'd valued them differently from Jason, that'd have been rude and disappointing, but maybe understandable to some degree. At least these things happen. A former landlady of mine had donated a rare and precious motorcycle she inherited from her fat…

I was replying to the parent comment.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#139

Post by layer8 »

TylerE wrote: post #83
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…

Rather the reverse. Any publication is easily available in PDF. Real solid furniture is nearly impossibly to find new. Everthing is particleboard and vaneers, or if higher end, mdf and veneers.

> Real solid furniture is nearly impossibly to find new.

No, it’s just become very expensive.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#140

Post by jrumbut »

bruce511 wrote: post #75
rdtsc wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. In a marketplace we might say that something has the value someone else is will pay for it. In case of donations like these it's somewhat tricky, it has the value someone is willing to take good care of it and preserve it. That's why…

>> seen this happen with my own family. Some older family member thinks their collectables they have been saving are super valuable, only to find out that nobody in the family wants them I've said this before, but it bears repeating. The joy of collections comes in the collecting, not the final collection. Nobody wants to inherit "someone else's collection" - they want to collect themselves. Secondly, 95% of your col…

Collecting usually occurs in a niche community, so who is selling matters.

A well known collector finally parting with their prize pieces everyone has been drooling over for 40 years is going to yield a greater return than a stranger walking in with the same items looking for quick cash.

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