19 Dec
2003
19 Dec
'03
5:57 a.m.
Lest this turn rapidly into a 'who said what' - I think the meta-issue
is, as you aptly termed it - a "broiling" of folks who contact The List
with commercial interests in mind.
Someone who wants to tear up old iron to get the one chip that they can
sell onEbay for big bux ought, IMHO, to have various voltages applied to
sensitive regions of thier bodies.
But we have an odd propensity for excoriating posters who don't really
know much about what we do or what our interests are - rather thna taking
a bit of time to politely educate them.
All this is getting to the definition of the boundaries between
'amateur' and 'professional/commercial' and where we, as private
collectors and hobbyists, stand in realtion to these issues. Also the
perennial love/hate eBay issues come up - what aspects of commercial
legacy computing helps the Hobby? What damages it?
Cheers
John