OT and getting further OT all the time!

From: Tom Jennings <tomj_at_wps.com>
Date: Fri Feb 11 15:18:20 2005

On Fri, 11 Feb 2005, John Allain wrote:

> People looking for decent PC tech magazines have
> had essentitally nothing to go to for over five years now.
> That's pretty frustruating.
> If there is one, somebody say something. Somebody with
> experience reading pre-1995 works, please.

There's none. The 'problem' is, that peecee's have moved into
near-appliance status, so the stuff we like to do is a microscopic
fraction of people-who-buy-new-computers-and-such and don't
warrant one of those PC WORLD type rags, which I personally felt
were reasonably content-free right from Vol1 #1.

Seriously -- what would they cover these days? That would sell
magazines? What's interesting in one new PC vs. another? Same
as a stereo, or other electronic appliances.

This is called, getting what you ask for :-) Computers are now
ubiquitous, everyone has one, and it's become boring :-) (Tongue
in cheek there, no comments necessary.)

For *doing things with* computers there's still selections worth
bothering with, I get some here at UCI: CIRCUIT CELLAR, NUTS N
VOLTS, etc.

Seems like everything else is software. The same thing happened to
ham radio, largely; in 1965 you could still build a respectable
receiver. Today, $100 buys you specs few could design or build.
vhf and repeaters have replaced rag-chewing about coax and
antennae on hf (hmm, is it really any worse now? :-) (I'm Extra
Class, KF6QFI, for context).

(ham radio digression...)

John Lawson is the only other person I know of on this list and
GREENKEYS, a bunch of hams really into old gear. They somewhat
frown on doing radioteletype (rtty) with computers, preferring
items that drip bits and oil in the rug, but I bet if you did it
with an OLD computer... :-)
Received on Fri Feb 11 2005 - 15:18:20 GMT