RFC: ClassicCmp Demographics/Geographics

From: Pat Finnegan <pat_at_purdueriots.com>
Date: Sun Feb 10 16:46:02 2002

On Sun, 10 Feb 2002, Doc Shipley wrote:

> Hey.
> Along the lines of last week's "specialty" thread, I'm kind of curious
> where the various members (including and especially lurkers) live.
> Maybe more to the point, where our various machines and parts dumps
> reside....

Yeah, that sounds like a good/useful idea. I'd be willing to do some work
on setting this up. I could even host the database... right now, using
a server on Purdue's campus.

> I've managed so far never to touch a database, but this strikes me as
> an interesting-enough and simple-enough first project. I'm interested
> in listing and correlating several things:

The last time I've really played with a database was back in Windows 3.1
days with Microsoft Access. However, I know people that know what they're
doing and could assist me ;). [I'd propose a system set up on a Linux
server, not Windows of course.]

> Skillset resources - who knows what, where. For instance, if I had an
> Amiga with catweasel hardware and I knew Grumpy ol' Fred lived 30 miles
> away, I might just drive out one Saturday, set it up, and learn
> something. Or whatever.
> Collections. Who has what, where. I travel nationwide (when there's
> work to do, that is), and if I know a list-member lives in the area I'll
> be in, I might arrange to see their collection, or even do some very
> rare face-to-face trading.
> Commercial regional and local parts and components resources. Most of
> us seem to have pet electronics suppliers in our areas.
> Wish lists. Who _wants_ what, where.
> What do we do when we're not playing with very old toys? (Yeah, I
> know. Look for older toys)
>
> We could do this as an online db, although I doubt that we'd want a
> lot of it public.

That's a rather simple thing to do, although it would still be hard to
prevent 'leechers' if we want it open. My basic idea is to have
'accounts' (email and password perhaps) that you must be a member of
classiccmp to set up (checks that you are a list member... somehow...
still need to hash out details for that), and sends the person a
verification code via email to confirm their account is being registered
by them. After they have an account, simple .htaccess files would do a
good job of limiting access to the data.

-- Pat
Received on Sun Feb 10 2002 - 16:46:02 GMT