17 Oct
2010
17 Oct
'10
9:47 p.m.
(I often think that the downside of ebay is that an
item goes to the person > with the deepest pockets, and they're not necessarily the
best person to treat > an item nicely)>> >> So eBay is precisely like every
other market on the planet.>> >> Shocking. <rolls eyes>><rolls
eyes back> I don't think that I claimed that it wasn't. My point was >that
it often has a downside when it comes to getting items to people who are >best capable
of preserving them for future generations.
My appologies, Jules.
I had taken your comment as Yet Another instance of the weekly "eBay sucks because
people pay more than I would and, as a special snowflake Classic Computer person, I'm
an authority and anyone who pays more than I would is an idiot" thread, when in
reality it was Yet Another instance of the weekly "eBay sucks because anyone who
outbids me is certainly almost possibly definately as far as I'm concerned, as a
Special Snowflake classic computer person, unworthy to own it" thread. I sometimes
lack the patience to keep track of the multitude of ways that list members condescend to
the world at large.
My bad.
17 Oct
17 Oct
10:11 p.m.
Ken Seefried wrote:
You're wrong again, because I've never bought anything on ebay, and so
therefore have never been outbid on anything :P
Do you really believe that there aren't people out there who buy things on the
spur of the moment, simply because they can, and because the "ooh, shiny!"
factor comes into play? In fact, I suspect that the majority of us have bought
things (shiny or otherwise) on a whim before, and subsequently tucked them
away out of sight or eventually thrown them away - all that varies is the
deepness of the pockets :-)
cheers
Jules
(I often think
that the downside of ebay is that an item goes to the
person > with the deepest pockets, and they're not necessarily the best
person to treat > an item nicely)>> >> So eBay is precisely like every
other market on the planet.>> >> Shocking. <rolls eyes>><rolls
eyes back>
I don't think that I claimed that it wasn't. My point was >that it often
has a downside when it comes to getting items to people who are >best
capable of preserving them for future generations.
My appologies, Jules.
I had taken your comment as Yet Another instance of the weekly "eBay sucks
because people pay more than I would and, as a special snowflake Classic
Computer person, I'm an authority and anyone who pays more than I would is
an idiot" thread, when in reality it was Yet Another instance of the weekly
"eBay sucks because anyone who outbids me is certainly almost possibly
definately as far as I'm concerned, as a Special Snowflake classic computer
person, unworthy to own it" thread. I sometimes lack the patience to keep
track of the multitude of ways that list members condescend to the world at
large. 
10:32 p.m.
If it was up to some people on this list nothing x86 would live to see a
museum because they are unworthy. You don't need military vandalism to
accomplish what a recycler can easily do.
11:03 p.m.
On Sun, 17 Oct 2010, Teo Zenios wrote:
If it was up to some people on this list nothing x86
would live to see a
museum because they are unworthy. You don't need military vandalism to
accomplish what a recycler can easily do.
To misquote Liddy:
"Never rely on malice for what can be easily accomplished by
incompetence."
11:30 p.m.
Teo Zenios wrote:
If it was up to some people on this list nothing x86
would live to see a
museum because they are unworthy. You don't need military vandalism to
accomplish what a recycler can easily do.
Not just people, but I think that's a trap that museums can easily fall into,
too - that what is or was commonplace can be seen as mundane and boring and
yes, "not worthy". Museums can't afford to collect everything, and so
it's
those things which fall by the wayside, and there's a danger of there being a
real gap 20 or 30 years down the line.
I'm glad that I've bumped into a few people that collect the sort of dot
matrix printers common in the 80s, for instance. I don't think many people
find them interesting, but I'm glad that there are people hoarding them,
because otherwise they might be a very rare sight indeed in a few decades' time.
(I remember about 5 years ago trying to amass a collection of 486 PCs for a
project. It was a bit of an eye-opener, and I gave up after a few months - it
was just too difficult. They were long-gone to the crusher from offices, and
individuals hadn't retained them as they had other systems because they had no
nostalgia or "coolness factor")
cheers
Jules
18 Oct
18 Oct
4:08 p.m.
Teo Zenios wrote:
When I started collecting old computers (they weren't 'classic' then)
back in 1986, I did so becuase after rescuing a minicomputer from being
scrapped, I realised that while museums were preserving the truely rare
machines, there were a lot of once-common machines that museums were not
interested in, and unless somebody did something then 20 years of
computer histroy was going to vanish.
So I did something.
If it was up to some people on this list nothing
x86 would live to see a
museum because they are unworthy. You don't need military vandalism to
accomplish what a recycler can easily do.
Not just people, but I think that's a trap that museums can easily fall into,
too - that what is or was commonplace can be seen as mundane and boring and
yes, "not worthy". Museums can't afford to collect everything, and so
it's
those things which fall by the wayside, and there's a danger of there being a
real gap 20 or 30 years down the line. I'm glad that I've bumped into a few people
that collect the sort of dot
matrix printers common in the 80s, for instance. I don't think many people
find them interesting, but I'm glad that there are people hoarding them,
because otherwise they might be a very rare sight indeed in a few decades' time.
AS I've mentioned before, I am a hardware person, and while (of course) I
find computers intersting, I can also find their peripherals as
interesting. I mentioned a couple of weeks back that I'd just got an
Olivetti sparkjet printer running again. Of course I don't intend to use
it seriously a a printer. But it's an interesting idea (even if the print
quality is only just about legible :-)), and IMHO such a machine should
be preserved.
(I remember about 5 years ago trying to amass a
collection of 486 PCs for a
project. It was a bit of an eye-opener, and I gave up after a few months - it
was just too difficult. They were long-gone to the crusher from offices, and
individuals hadn't retained them as they had other systems because they had no
nostalgia or "coolness factor")
I have ot admit that _I_ am not interested in PC clones, but that
certainly doesn't mean that nobody should be, or that they don't need ot
be preserved. They are certainly an important part of the history of
computing.
-tony
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days inactive
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participants (5)
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
jules.richardson99＠gmail.com -
ken＠seefried.com -
teoz＠neo.rr.com