28 Mar
2017
28 Mar
'17
2:12 p.m.
Hi,
I came across this on eBay today: www.ebay.com/itm/162446083760
To quote from the listing:
Own a piece of gaming history! This Indy workstation was once owned by
Acclaim Entertainment, the legendary game publisher, and was liquidated
at Acclaim's bankruptcy sale in 2004. It sat untouched in a Brooklyn
warehouse for more than a decade before being recovered last year.
This Indy, "pup," was used for internal Acclaim business operations at
its headquarters in Glen Cove, NY. It features user account information
and internal company files for a number of Acclaim employees:
Andy Skalka: More than a hundred e-mail messages about Acclaim IT
operations (see photos)
Danielle Papsidero: More than five hundred e-mail messages (see photos)
Rob Zimmelman: Image sequence for Dragonheart game combat
EVa motion capture editing software (unlicensed)
BioMotion motion capture editing software (unlicensed)
Motion captured animation data (Dreamworks, baseball, Batman, etc.)
Licenses: various expired and/or inactive licenses for Nichimen N-World
and BioMotionEditor
No affiliation with the seller, but it sounds like an interesting piece of
history. Price is $199 BIN.
Cheers, MJ
--
Michael-John Turner * mj at mjturner.net * http://mjturner.net/
28 Mar
28 Mar
2:36 p.m.
New subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay
On Tue, 28 Mar 2017, Michael-John Turner via cctalk wrote:
Own a piece of gaming history! This Indy workstation
was once owned
by Acclaim Entertainment, the legendary game publisher, and was
liquidated at Acclaim's bankruptcy sale in 2004. It sat untouched in a
Brooklyn warehouse for more than a decade before being recovered last
year.
<snip>
Andy Skalka: More than a hundred e-mail messages
about Acclaim IT
operations (see photos)
Danielle Papsidero: More than five hundred e-mail messages (see
photos)
Rob Zimmelman: Image sequence for Dragonheart game combat
EVa motion capture editing software (unlicensed)
BioMotion motion capture editing software (unlicensed)
Motion captured animation data (Dreamworks, baseball, Batman, etc.)
Licenses: various expired and/or inactive licenses for Nichimen
This guy is on Reddit and has been posting lots of stuff from these
machines and I can't help but feel a bit suspect about all of this. While
they're old machines, the information is presumably no longer of any
commercial value and the company no longer exists... I can't help but feel
that this is an invasion of someone's privacy. The commercial content is
one thing - although whether it's truly "abandoned" runs down into all of
those arguments we see flare up in cctalk about once every two years, so
let's not go there again...
But... eMails? I dunno. I've been pulling a lot of data off a Cray J90 and
I've had a lot of people ask me to release it to the public and I just
can't bring myself to do so. I'm _pretty sure_ that it belonged to NASA,
which might mean some/all of the information may even be Public Domain -
but this has people's usernames, and lord knows what kind of effort they
put into the work. (And that's ignoring how not-qualified I am to make the
PD assertion)
It just feels _wrong_ to me, personally.
While I'm not specifically crapping on the guy selling this Indy - I'm
kind of curious how others feel about this sort of thing as it's something
I've been confronted with personally lately.
Cheers;
- JP
3:51 p.m.
New subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay
How do you feel about reading dead presidents personal letters? At some
point personal information ends up being historic information.
If there is money (or more money) to be made associating a Computer to a
company or specific somewhat famous people then sellers will play this angle
for all it is worth. Anything done on company machines is not private to
begin with. What exactly are we going to learn other then people asking for
vacation days, so and so is a shitty boss, the company probably used some
pirated software, and early artwork or code for games might have been pretty
shitty.
I get computers all the time with hard drive intact full of company data
(some defunct, others not) and peoples personal files, music, videos, and
photos. I don't bother looking at any of it, only backing up hard to find
drivers or software keys then wiping the drive. If I did come across a user
that was famous (or infamous) I would probably preserve it (remove the drive
and store it somewhere) while going about my hobby interest with the
machine.
Everything we do today is digital, sooner or later there will be no written
records at all. In the distant future historians will want to know what we
were doing in 2017 and they will have nothing to go by since all the
websites will be long gone and all our files will have been erased or saved
using backup methods nobody can make heads or tales of let alone find the
programs that can read the files and computers that the programs can run on.
So I think a small random fraction of users lives should be around to learn
from. If for some reason we nuke ourselves into oblivion (or more likely
just keep destroying the environment until we can no long function as a
society) then maybe people down the road should look over out private files,
posts, emails, blogs, etc. to see how people could allow it to happen. You
won't be able to see government files because everything will be stamped Top
Secret (or more likely deleted) including your own data they illegally
obtained.
-----Original Message-----
From: JP Hindin via cctalk
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2017 5:36 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with
data, emails, etc) on eBay
This guy is on Reddit and has been posting lots of stuff from these
machines and I can't help but feel a bit suspect about all of this. While
they're old machines, the information is presumably no longer of any
commercial value and the company no longer exists... I can't help but feel
that this is an invasion of someone's privacy. The commercial content is
one thing - although whether it's truly "abandoned" runs down into all of
those arguments we see flare up in cctalk about once every two years, so
let's not go there again...
But... eMails? I dunno. I've been pulling a lot of data off a Cray J90 and
I've had a lot of people ask me to release it to the public and I just
can't bring myself to do so. I'm _pretty sure_ that it belonged to NASA,
which might mean some/all of the information may even be Public Domain -
but this has people's usernames, and lord knows what kind of effort they
put into the work. (And that's ignoring how not-qualified I am to make the
PD assertion)
It just feels _wrong_ to me, personally.
While I'm not specifically crapping on the guy selling this Indy - I'm
kind of curious how others feel about this sort of thing as it's something
I've been confronted with personally lately.
Cheers;
- JP
---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
4:27 p.m.
New subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay
On 2017-03-28 6:51 PM, TeoZ via cctalk wrote:
How do you feel about reading dead presidents personal
letters? At some
point personal information ends up being historic information.
I am not a lawyer, but it almost seems like something that actual law
should cover.
* http://codes.findlaw.com/ny/general-business-law/gbs-sect-399-h.html
* http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/intellectual-property
* http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/publication-private-facts
If there is money (or more money) to be made associating a Computer to a
company or specific somewhat famous people then sellers will play this
angle for all it is worth. Anything done on company machines is not
private to begin with. What exactly are we going to learn other then
people asking for vacation days, so and so is a shitty boss, the company
probably used some pirated software, and early artwork or code for games
might have been pretty shitty.
"Nothing to hide" arguments don't justify making this public wholesale
(or depriving anyone of privacy).
I get computers all the time with hard drive intact full of company data
(some defunct, others not) and peoples personal files, music, videos,
and photos. I don't bother looking at any of it, only backing up hard to
find drivers or software keys then wiping the drive. If I did come
across a user that was famous (or infamous) I would probably preserve it
(remove the drive and store it somewhere) while going about my hobby
interest with the machine.
Perhaps what you should do, is contact them, ask if they want the data,
and if they say no - or you can't reach them - wipe it. But it seems
that even doing this much may expose you to liability, so ask your own
lawyer.
Everything we do today is digital, sooner or later there will be no
written records at all. In the distant future historians will want to
know what we were doing in 2017 and they will have nothing to go by
since all the websites will be long gone and all our files will have
been erased or saved using backup methods nobody can make heads or tales
of let alone find the programs that can read the files and computers
that the programs can run on. So I think a small random fraction of
users lives should be around to learn from. If for some reason we nuke
How about making this an opt-in scheme, not "my stuff fell into am
unscrupulous stranger's hands and now it's all over the internet".
ourselves into oblivion (or more likely just keep
destroying the
environment until we can no long function as a society) then maybe
people down the road should look over out private files, posts, emails,
blogs, etc. to see how people could allow it to happen. You won't be
able to see government files because everything will be stamped Top
Your governments have been destroying their internal communications, or
otherwise concealing them, for decades.
--Toby
Secret (or more likely deleted) including your own
data they illegally
obtained.
-----Original Message----- From: JP Hindin via cctalk
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2017 5:36 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy
(with data, emails, etc) on eBay
This guy is on Reddit and has been posting lots of stuff from these
machines and I can't help but feel a bit suspect about all of this. While
they're old machines, the information is presumably no longer of any
commercial value and the company no longer exists... I can't help but feel
that this is an invasion of someone's privacy. The commercial content is
one thing - although whether it's truly "abandoned" runs down into all of
those arguments we see flare up in cctalk about once every two years, so
let's not go there again...
But... eMails? I dunno. I've been pulling a lot of data off a Cray J90 and
I've had a lot of people ask me to release it to the public and I just
can't bring myself to do so. I'm _pretty sure_ that it belonged to NASA,
which might mean some/all of the information may even be Public Domain -
but this has people's usernames, and lord knows what kind of effort they
put into the work. (And that's ignoring how not-qualified I am to make the
PD assertion)
It just feels _wrong_ to me, personally.
While I'm not specifically crapping on the guy selling this Indy - I'm
kind of curious how others feel about this sort of thing as it's something
I've been confronted with personally lately.
Cheers;
- JP
---
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
6:42 p.m.
New subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay
On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 6:51 PM, TeoZ via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
wrote:
How do you feel about reading dead presidents personal
letters? At some
point personal information ends up being historic information.
If there is money (or more money) to be made associating a Computer to a
company or specific somewhat famous people then sellers will play this
angle for all it is worth. Anything done on company machines *is not
private to begin with.* What exactly are we going to learn other then
people asking for vacation days, so and so is a shitty boss, the company
probably used some pirated software, and early artwork or code for games
might have been pretty shitty.
"not private to begin with" is a conveniently loose interpretation of the
law. What you do on a company computer is certainly available information
to the company - I won't argue that. You can not, however, conflate that
with the many things that might be stored on company computers are
protected from disclosure outside the company and individual. A
conversation with HR about recovery from your alcoholism would certainly be
protected from disclosure.
I get computers all the time with hard drive intact
full of company data
(some defunct, others not) and peoples personal files, music, videos, and
photos. I don't bother looking at any of it, only backing up hard to find
drivers or software keys then wiping the drive. If I did come across a user
that was famous (or infamous) I would probably preserve it (remove the
drive and store it somewhere) while going about my hobby interest with the
machine.
Everything we do today is digital, sooner or later there will be no
written records at all. In the distant future historians will want to know
what we were doing in 2017 and they will have nothing to go by since all
the websites will be long gone and all our files will have been erased or
saved using backup methods nobody can make heads or tales of let alone find
the programs that can read the files and computers that the programs can
run on.
Maybe the wayback machine will keep this all, but that is not irrelevant to
this thread.
So I think a small random fraction of users lives
should be around to
learn from.
But we are not talking about users from the distant past. We are talking
about people who are still alive today - and probably discoverable with an
easy web search. We should respect their privacy.
7:22 p.m.
New subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay
> How do you feel about reading dead presidents
personal letters? At some
> point personal information ends up being historic information.
The item in question seems to be ten years old.
THAT doesn't sound like "historical" can or should over-ride current
rights holders.
At some point, "grave robbing" turns into "respectable archeology",
but
this doesn't seem to have reached that point. THESE "presidents" are
still alive, and their PERSONAL letters are not yet "history".
On Tue, 28 Mar 2017, Tony Aiuto via cctalk wrote:
"not private to begin with" is a
conveniently loose interpretation of the
law. What you do on a company computer is certainly available information
to the company - I won't argue that. You can not, however, conflate that
with the many things that might be stored on company computers are
protected from disclosure outside the company and individual. A
conversation with HR about recovery from your alcoholism would certainly be
protected from disclosure.
There is a concept of "in the public eye" that takes away most privacy of
things done in public, or as official actions. Nixon's Oval Office
actions did not have an expectation of privacy, but his bedroom did.
(Not that that would be interesting, I'm willing to believe from his
values and attitudes that Nixon was a virgin)
SOME privacy ceases on death. SOME lasts until it is clear that the
actions are "historical" rather than "personal"
> (some defunct, others not) and peoples personal
files, music, videos, and
> photos. I don't bother looking at any of it, only backing up hard to find
> drivers or software keys then wiping the drive. If I did come across a user
> that was famous (or infamous) I would probably preserve it (remove the
> drive and store it somewhere) while going about my hobby interest with the
> machine.
If it is a person who is alive, or RECENTLY deceased (Jobs?), it should be
returned to them or their estate.
Long ago, no problem.
There is not a clear line to draw.
> Everything we do today is digital, sooner or later
there will be no
> written records at all. In the distant future historians will want to know
> what we were doing in 2017 and they will have nothing to go by since all
> the websites will be long gone and all our files will have been erased or
> saved using backup methods nobody can make heads or tales of let alone find
> the programs that can read the files and computers that the programs can
> run on.
Who said, "the internet is written in sand"?
Maybe the wayback machine will keep this all, but that
is not irrelevant to
this thread.
> So I think a small random fraction of users lives should be around to
> learn from.
But, not while they (or theirs) are still around to be affected by the
release.
But we are not talking about users from the distant
past. We are talking
about people who are still alive today - and probably discoverable with an
easy web search. We should respect their privacy.
Al's link was for Turok source code. It came out in 2008. I seriously
doubt that it could be considered to be "abandoned". Even if acquired in
good faith through oversight or accident, it would not be appropriate to
release somebody's source code.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
5:38 p.m.
New subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay
On 03/28/2017 02:36 PM, JP Hindin via cctalk wrote:
But... eMails? I dunno. I've been pulling a lot of
data off a Cray
J90 and I've had a lot of people ask me to release it to the public
and I just can't bring myself to do so. I'm _pretty sure_ that it
belonged to NASA, which might mean some/all of the information may
even be Public Domain - but this has people's usernames, and lord
knows what kind of effort they put into the work. (And that's
ignoring how not-qualified I am to make the PD assertion)
It just feels _wrong_ to me, personally.
Well, as someone who occasionally does work for JPL, I should mention
that a lot of the stuff you may find from the 80s and 90s may still be
classified--or at least sensitive.
Doubtless there are federal laws about this sort of thing and you really
don't want the black van pulling up in front of your place.
--Chuck
6:21 p.m.
New subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay
When I did media conversion for people, I ignored their content, other
than monitoring for quality control.
Same as when I used to do photographic color printing, and did some for
other people.
Anything else would be seriously unethical.
THAT is simple professional ethics.
Otherwise, it's on a par with accidentally overhearing somebody else's
conversation, credit card number that they are blabbing into a cellphone,
ets.
If and when I end up with somebody's old drive, I check for anything that
they might want back, and wipe the rest.
On one recent laptop, I found a folder of pictures that the previous owner
had forgotten about, and was grateful to get.
On another machine, the previous owner had lost a password to a site, but
it was stored in the machine. I used the "saved password" to login and
changed it to a known one.
Not only do I not feel a right to somebody else's work, I don't have an
interest.
An exception is that after a friend died, I saved his documents and
his non-personal pictures, as if he had shared them with me.
(I kept his landscape photos, but erased his personal erotica)
When I get rid of a machine, I'd like to just hand it off to somebody who
would have use for it.
But, if people are going through what's on old machines, then I will have
to start wiping hard disks before parting with them. There are SOME
people whom I would trust if they promised to wipe the content after
receiving them. For others, . . .
That's a hassle!
Yes, it really isn't much work, but, . . .
I've got a 200MB 3.5" ESDI drive to get rid of. But, now I don't think
that I can do so until after I locate a WD '07 controller, connect it, and
low level format it. Since "scrounging" that controller is on a priority
level comparable to cleaning the gutters, it's not happening.
I've got a crate of ST4096s.
I've got a large collection of OQOs. I guess that before I can give them
away, I need to get each and every one working, or remove its HDD.
When I run into a TRS80 model 1 disk with some data and system, should I
bulk erase it, or rely on the ethics of somebody who might need a boot
disk? Or do I need to delay giving away anything such until I get around
to setting up a system to read it? Would anybody WANT a TRSDOS 2.0 disk?
APR-DOS?
or a PC-DOS 1.0 disk with the weird double side (as second drive) patch?
Gavilan MS-DOS 2.11J? 2.11K?
Gavilan "bubble memory"? (already gave that away to somebody trustworthy)
There is an implicit level of TRUST when dealing with used media and
hardware. Let's not abuse it.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
6:36 p.m.
New subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay
On 3/28/17 6:21 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
Anything else would be seriously unethical.
the guy on ebay made a big deal on the net about one SGI machine that he knew had video
game source code on it.
6:38 p.m.
New subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/turok-source-code-ebay
On 3/28/17 6:36 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
On 3/28/17 6:21 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
Anything else would be seriously unethical.
the guy on ebay made a big deal on the net about one SGI machine that he knew had video
game source code on it.
6:48 p.m.
New subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay
On 3/28/2017 6:38 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote:
the guy on ebay made a big deal on the net about one
SGI machine that he knew had video game source code on it.
Not unusual. The more
people crow about it the more hammers will swing
on good hardware that could otherwise be repurposed.
I worked @ a company which was famous for their what I call Tidy-bug
attitude. They gathered up a lot of stuff about 6 months in and make a
huge pile of free take stuff at the back door.
including one techs private stuff while he wasn't at his desk (he had
permission) and several other such small nits.
but the satisfying bit of karma for this old hoarder was that they
insisted on taking all the disk drives out which were of course
"sensitive" and rather than hook them to a Linux machine or such with a
wiper program, insisted on actually ball peening them. just so sad.
They had three drives with irreplaceable no backed up software and pulls
from systems which were rarely used but had software
loaded which were lost.
I hate to take satisfaction but I just don't work the way of ignorant
solutions being the way to go because they seem simple. This one really
bit them in the ass. An intelligent solution of wiping the hardware and
then checking would have worked since all were sata or Pata or IDE
drives easily readable.
but none of their data got out in the exercise.
thanks
Jim
8:53 p.m.
New subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay
On 03/28/2017 06:21 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
When I did media conversion for people, I ignored
their content,
other than monitoring for quality control. Same as when I used to do
photographic color printing, and did some for other people. Anything
else would be seriously unethical. THAT is simple professional
ethics.
Just so--I still do a fair amount of conversion and a lot of it is very
personal stuff. I may spot-check the output in places to make sure
that it's not garbage, but otherwise, it's strictly not for my eyes.
Back when I used to do forensic processing for various law enforcement
organizations, I was sometimes called upon to help reconstruct data.
The only time that I paid attention to one such process, it was the
journal of a sexual predator. It made me ill to read it and I vowed
never to do that again--and I didn't.
--Chuck
5:45 p.m.
New subject: PreOwned machine privacy - Was: Acclaim Entertainment Indy (with data, emails, etc) on eBay
On Mar 28, 2017, at 2:36 PM, JP Hindin via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
While I'm not specifically crapping on the guy selling this Indy - I'm kind of
curious how others feel about this sort of thing as it's something I've been
confronted with personally lately.
It?s going to make it harder for people to get castoff hardware, because companies are
going to err on the side of destroying anything that might possibly be sensitive. (Just as
many already do.)
Do you really think such companies will pull drives and shred just the drives before
scrapping systems? Or is it more likely they?ll just put the entire systems through a
shredder? And even if they did just pull drives, what if they use a hard-to-find
interconnect, or an OS that can?t be easily reloaded?
-- Chris
2601
days inactive
2602
days old
12 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
aek＠bitsavers.org -
cclist＠sydex.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
cmhanson＠eschatologist.net -
jplist2008＠kiwigeek.com -
jwsmail＠jwsss.com -
mj＠mjturner.net -
teoz＠neo.rr.com -
toby＠telegraphics.com.au -
tony.aiuto＠gmail.com