PDP-10 programming [was RE: Dumb Terminal games (was Re: Looking for a small fast VAX development machine)]

[Alan Perry]

I loaned Rich my big bag of DECsystem-20 docs, including the Gorin book, from my days as a systems programmer on a couple of -20s in college. Guess I should have taken a deposit or some ID ;)

I had some time to kill in SoDo and went to LCM for the first since it opened to the public. I tried to say 'hi' to Rich and instead got my bag of DEC stuff back. Didn't really need it back then.

I had been asking Rich about the stuff because I had been trying to get some other docs back from another museum and they couldn't find them. I just wanted to make sure Rich knew where my -20 stuff was. Oh well.

I was one of the first outside people to get an account on LCM's Toad, but one day I found my account was gone, so I have been doing -20 work on SIMH since then.

alan

> On Mar 1, 2016, at 17:40, Ian S. King <isking at uw.edu> wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 5:11 PM, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 2016-Mar-01, at 4:36 PM, Sean Conner wrote:
>>> It was thus said that the Great Rich Alderson once stated:
>>>> 
>>>> For most hobbyists, even $100 is too much.  I was simply astounded at
>> the
>>>> chutzpah of the seller--right there on the Amazon list--who was asking
>>>> nearly $1500 for a copy.
>>> 
>>> I think that comes from an unchecked computer algorithm, not simple
>> greed.
>>> I think what's happening here is someone (some Amazon third party)
>> offered
>>> the book for, say, $5.  Another third party scans Amazon for such books,
>> and
>>> offers it for say, $6, with the hope that you (the potential buyer) will
>>> only see their their offer for $6 and buy from them, at which point they
>>> will buy it for $5 from the original seller, sell it to you for $6 and
>>> pocket the $1 profit.  The problem comes when a third third-party seller
>>> sees the offer for $6 and does the same thing as the second one, only now
>>> they're offering it for $7, will pay $6 for it and pocket $1 profit.
>>> 
>>> Keep repeating that process and you end up with books selling for $1500.
>>> 
>>> -spc (Who knows?  If you keep searching, you might find the original
>>>      seller selling it for $5 ... )
>> 
>> 
>> For example:
>> 
>> http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/why-did-amazon-charge-23698655-93-for-a-textbook/
>> I've come across other articles about this in the past. Don't know the
>> specifics of the book mentioned by Rich.
> On abebooks.com, the lowest price is right around $100 with shipping.  Yes,
> this sucks.  Yes, this is how capitalism works.  :-)  I've paid serious
> money for books that are relevant to my research that aren't available in
> libraries - one of them was no closer than Paris.  (I bought it from India
> for about $50, and I won't loan it out.)
> 
> -- 
> Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate
> The Information School <http://ischool.uw.edu>
> Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical
> Narrative Through a Design Lens
> 
> Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal <http://tribunalvoices.org>
> Value Sensitive Design Research Lab <http://vsdesign.org>
> 
> University of Washington
> 
> There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."