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 <isk...@uw.edu> wrote: > >> On Tue, Mar 1, 2016 at 5:11 PM, Brent Hilpert <hilp...@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."
