--- Evan Koblentz <evan at snarc.net> wrote:
A 10-year-rule is not a principle. It made sense in
1997. It doesn't make
sense now.
Here in NJ, there's a 25-year-rule for getting
special license plates on an
antique car. Great, so cars from 1981 are now
antiques...!?
Yeah, I would guess so. But remember, as time marches
on, things that were current become obsolete. If you
limit classic cars to 1969 and older, then pretty
soon, there won't be any in the hands of actual
collectors. Sure, you may remember buying a car new in
1981 - and it might not be special to you, but for
someone else, it may be a classic. I know that I
really miss our 1981 Cutlas Supreme station wagon -
and to me, it's a classic.
So, you can't just limit "classic computers" to stuff
that was made before 1987, either. As technology moves
foreward, more and more things become obsolete or, as
some like to call it, vintage or classic. And while to
_me_ a 486 will not feel like a classic, I know some
people that have never used a computer that didn't
have a CDROM burner. To them a machine with 16 megs of
RAM is classic.
We can all agree that a Vax is a classic - but no
matter how hard I try, I have never been able to bag a
Vax - it seems that you have to be part of some secret
society to find one of those. Kinda like going out
tomorrow and trying to find a '48 Packard. But there's
plenty of classic to go around and it's impossible to
define classic in a static method that will make
everyone happy.
So, rather than spending our energy telling people
"NO! That Pentium 75 is NOT a classic, get lost!" or
even trying to define, logically, what really is
classic, I think we should focus on the community
we've got here. We have a lot of great people, and a
large wealth of knowledge and generosity. We also seem
to have picked up a bit of elitism and hatred toward
certain things or systems. Yeah, I don't like
Microsoft either - but I still think that Windows 3.1
has it's place in the history of computing, and if
someone wants some help or wants to talk about it,
well, this _is_ the classic computing list.
The only point I'm trying to make is that we should
just try and have fun with this hobby. A lot of us
have different interests and have different periods of
computing that we like to work with. Overall, the ten
year rule does work pretty well to separate the old
stuff from the new stuff. Yeah, it's not the greatest,
but it kinda works as a baseline. And it's not like
clearly defining off topic and on topic really matters
all that much anyway, that's why we have two different
lists - cctech and cctalk. You're going to get off
topic posts on every bulliten board or mailing list.
This is a community as much as it is a mailing list.
Have fun with it, and don't take the list (or
yourself) too seriously. The most important thing we
can do is to keep the hobby fun, and help each other.
If we can't do that, then what's the point in talking
to each other?
Think happy thoughts, never post just to be annoying,
and yes, there are lots of holy wars out there - vi
vs. emacs, Linux vs. Windows, Mac vs. PC, Amiga vs.
everything else... -- the important thing to keep in
mind is that our goal in life is _not_ to make
everyone else think as we do. Have fun! This is a
hobby. It's supposed to be fun.
Apologies for being so preachy and long winded. I have
a bad habit of doing things like that - being a nice
guy has always gotten me into trouble in the past.
I'll shut up now.
-Ian