I suppose they're putting all their films on archive.org, too

[Joseph Nebus]

The Encyclopaedia Britannica is ending its print edition.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto



--
http://nebusresearch.wordpress.com/ Joseph Nebus
Current Entry: Introducing a Very Small Number http://wp.me/p1RYhY-7m
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[Frank J. Lhota]

On 3/13/2012 11:31 PM, Joseph Nebus wrote:
> The Encyclopaedia Britannica is ending its print edition.
>
> http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto
>
>
>

Frankly, I was surprised to learn that they kept the print edition going
until this year. For the cost of the complete dead tree set of
encyclopedias, one could buy the both the DVD-ROM version and a really
nice PC to play it on. Moreover, the DVD-ROM version would have
capabilities that the paper version could never have, including
hyperlinks, multi-media and live content.

Speaking of older technology, some of the artifacts from the early days
of computers would now make excellent scavenger hunt items. In the early
1980's 5 1/4" low density floppy disks were exceedingly common. Where
could you find one now? An even greater challenge: find that one-time
staple of mainframe computing, the hollerith card!

--
"All things extant in this world,
Gods of Heaven, gods of Earth,
Let everything be as it should be;
Thus shall it be!"
- Magical chant from "Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi"

"Drizzle, Drazzle, Drozzle, Drome,
Time for this one to come home!"
- Mr. Wizard from "Tooter Turtle"

[weary flake]

"Frank J. Lhota" <FrankLh...@rcn.com> wrote:

> On 3/13/2012 11:31 PM, Joseph Nebus wrote:
> > The Encyclopaedia Britannica is ending its print edition.
> >
> > http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaed
> > ia-britannica-stops-the-presses/?smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto

The Encyclopedia Britannica's been in decline since the 9th
edition (1903); they never should have moved to America.

> Frankly, I was surprised to learn that they kept the print edition going
> until this year. For the cost of the complete dead tree set of
> encyclopedias, one could buy the both the DVD-ROM version and a really
> nice PC to play it on. Moreover, the DVD-ROM version would have
> capabilities that the paper version could never have, including
> hyperlinks, multi-media and live content.

Don't knock books, real books. They have the vast technical
advantage of no hyperlinks, no multimedia or live content or
tethering to the internet. As for the current edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica I assume it is garbage, which is the
real reason why few are buying it.

> Speaking of older technology, some of the artifacts from the early days
> of computers would now make excellent scavenger hunt items. In the early
> 1980's 5 1/4" low density floppy disks were exceedingly common. Where
> could you find one now?

Old magazines might still have those floppies in them if they've
never been opened, as those floppies were used in advertisements.
Internet Culture, by the way, is closer in quality to those old
floppies or punch cards than to the magnificence of the printed book.

[Bice]

On Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:26:20 -0400, "Frank J. Lhota"
<FrankLh...@rcn.com> wrote:

>Speaking of older technology, some of the artifacts from the early days
>of computers would now make excellent scavenger hunt items. In the early
>1980's 5 1/4" low density floppy disks were exceedingly common. Where
>could you find one now?

Do Commodore 64 discs count? If so, I'm sitting about five feet away
from a box of them. Still have the computer and 1541 disk drive too.
No idea if any of it works - I haven't touched it in well over a
decade.

-- Bob

[Frank J. Lhota]

On 3/15/2012 9:36 PM, Bice wrote:
> Do Commodore 64 discs count? If so, I'm sitting about five feet away
> from a box of them. Still have the computer and 1541 disk drive too.
> No idea if any of it works - I haven't touched it in well over a
> decade.
>
> -- Bob

I'm not sure. I do recall hearing that some early workstations used 8"
floppies. Also, some of the first IBM/PC's had cassette tape drives,
where they would use cassette tapes as ersatz diskettes. Talk about a
double dose of obsolete technology!

[Jim Ellwanger]

In article <jjvuln$q25$1...@news.albasani.net>,

"Frank J. Lhota" <FrankLh...@rcn.com> wrote:

> I do recall hearing that some early workstations used 8" floppies.

When I worked as a closed-captioner, there were a few shows from the
early-to-mid-'80s that we had to caption because they were being rerun
on some cable channel or another -- "Dynasty" and "Hill Street Blues,"
to name two.

They'd been closed-captioned when they originally aired, so in theory
all we would have had to do was take the original captioning output file
and edit it (to account for edits to the shows, longer commercial
breaks, electronic speed-ups, etc.).

But we couldn't do that, so we had to caption them "from scratch."

The original output files, it turned out, were on 8-inch floppies that
could no longer be read.

--
Jim Ellwanger <use...@ellwanger.tv>
<http://www.ellwanger.tv> welcomes you daily.
"The days turn into nights; at night, you hear the trains."

[Paul Duca (tomservo56954@comcast.net)]

On Mar 13, 11:31 pm, nebu...@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) wrote:
>         The Encyclopaedia Britannica is ending its print edition.
>

> http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-ency...
>


What are they going to give away on game shows?


Paul Duca--the Supercharged MSTie
#56954


"I thought they made up that story (females together getting on the
same menstrual cycle) so that women couldn't join the Submarine Corps"

[Frank J. Lhota]

On 3/16/2012 7:45 PM, Paul Duca (tomser...@comcast.net) wrote:

> What are they going to give away on game shows?

A ten year subscription to Britannica online.

But hey, at least Britannica kept up with the times and made the
transition to the internet age. Last year I did a blog post about the
book "The New Industrial State" by John Kenneth Galbraith; see


http://fatherbrain.blogspot.com/2011/09/new-industrial-state-is-not-too-big-to.html

In this 1967 book, Galbraith contends that the largest corporations are
no longer subject to competition; they will always be leaders in their
respective industries. The book's examples of companies that need not
worry about competition included General Motors, IBM, and Montgomery
Ward. What I found particularly amusing was Galbraith's explanation as
to why Sears will always be the #1 retailer: the Sears catalog! One
wonders if Sears would be in better shape today if it had concentrated
on making their web site fill the same needs as their defunct dead tree
catalog.

[Andrew Morris]

On 2012-03-16 12:52:44 -0500, Frank J. Lhota said:

> On 3/15/2012 9:36 PM, Bice wrote:
>> Do Commodore 64 discs count? If so, I'm sitting about five feet away
>> from a box of them. Still have the computer and 1541 disk drive too.
>> No idea if any of it works - I haven't touched it in well over a
>> decade.
>>
>> -- Bob
>
> I'm not sure. I do recall hearing that some early workstations used 8"
> floppies. Also, some of the first IBM/PC's had cassette tape drives,
> where they would use cassette tapes as ersatz diskettes. Talk about a
> double dose of obsolete technology!

Right on both counts. 8" floppies were going away by the time I got
into computers (1982 or so) but my father showed me some lab equipment
he used that still used 8" disks.

And the PC did use cassettes, as did the C-64 and the Atari computers.
I well remember typing in programs from "Compute!" magazine and trying
desperately to find a tape to record them to, before my brother got mad
and switched the thing off so he could watch cartoons.

(Not so) Fun Fact! The core IBM architecture, which is the basis for
most of the PCs in service up until a couple of years ago, still had
provisions built in for cassette drive operations, though the drives
were almost a quarter-century out of date.

--
Andrew "Retro-Man" Morris
morra...@gmail.com