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Trojan Room Coffee Pot Auctioned Off
dlesko writes "The historic Trojan Room coffee pot at The University of Cambridge has gone to the highest bidder on ebay for £3,350.00 (that's about $5,055.20 USD based on the currency rates as of 8/12/01). You can see the results for about 90days. Now they just have to hope that the person actually comes through with the dough..." A fitting end to a net.legend. If I could figure out where Arial, my old DEC Alpha Multia that was the original Slashdot, I would auction that off and give the cash to the EFF (minus shipping a cost of a case of beer ;) Dave? Rosie? Where did that thing go? I know it was finally retired as the SMTP server... I probably should get it back someday ;)
Your sig quotes a hungarian title. Are you?
Your argument is ridiculous. First this crappy DEC box is not a one-of-a-kind work of art. Thousands exactly like it were made. Second, maybe some should preserve old junk, but that has nothing to do with Rob wanting to AUCTION the old machine (for presumably a lot of money, more than he paid for it) with the intrinsic "value" derived from the fact that it WAS the Slashdot server.
Many people outside the Computer Lab have been trying to link the lab to MS for some time, MS probably among them. Sure, some of the guys who work there may well also be associated with MS' new research facility in Cambridge. But try telling anyone in the CL that the Lab itself is formally linked to Microsoft, and you'll hear nothing but laughter.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The poster probably knew that, but simply put something else down instead. I've had it happen to me aswell.
Well I say 12th of August 2001. I also say 12:30:33,not 30:12:33, but heck as long as everyone know what the other person means then all is well ;-)
In case you missed it, here's our Joy of Tech comic about the retiring of the coffee pot...
heh... "My HELL as CoffeeCam SLAVE"
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
Back when "Wired" magazine was cool and not dedicated to the pursuit of $4000 CD players, they had a whole section on cool things on the Net. Two of the first places I ever went to were the Trojan Room Coffee Pot, and the CMU Coke machine Web interface. I still have a printout from the CMU machine ca. 1994, using NCSA Mosaic!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
It's at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/coffee.html.
Hmm, could someone tell me what date 8/12/01 translates to? Is it 8 December 2001, 12 July 2001 or 1 December 2008?
None of the above. If you start at January (as far as I'm aware, the usual convention what with it being named after the god of doors, beginnings, etc.), then the eighth month is August.
Yep Your right. :(
Once a long time ago (8 years) I was trying to write a program that could read disks from an old Convergent system called CTOS. I acutally found the guy that was maintaining the code to format the disks on that system. I thought I had it made. I asked him if he knew the specs for the disk fromat. I was shocked when I got the answer, "No I innerited the code. I do not know how it works I just plug the values into the the floppy controler." Good heavens.
I fear that some day EXT3 or what ever might be so stable that we all forget how it works
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
http://www.netscape.com/fishcam
why do you think they sold the coffee pot? They realized the better use for the camera.
Humans are slow, innaccurate, and brilliant; computers are fast, acurrate, and dumb; together they are unbeatable
Come on, you don't think people would actually pay real money for Katz, now do you? Well actually I could see someone buying Katz to ensure he doesn't pollute /. with one of his ridiculous 2500 word diatribes. However, it would be much simpler and less expensive to block his stories in the preferences, but what fun is that?
Daniel J. Kelly
What they really should have done is to sell the coffee pot and the webcam so that someone could set it up if they wanted... woulda been cool.
I'm not smart enough to have sig so here it is...
"Nope, I'm not using OS/2 or NCSA Mosaic anymore, and it's just sad"
I wouldn't know though, as I haven't turned mine on yet. It has no RAM, has not had the fan/heatsink mods, and is too clean to spoil by actually working :)
you had me at #!
The Means of Production has been dissociated from any fair concept of value by the iniquities of capitalism. In a fair, socilaist world, this pot would be valued at its inherent worth (about £3), and the rest of the money would be spent on enhancing the real means of production, the Satanic Mills and farmlands of our comrades, the working man.
Selling a broken pot is hardly what I'd call destructive capitalism... the CUCL offer afternoon tea and biscuits for something trivial like 12p and 2p respectively, and Tim mentions that they want to shun the ultimate symbol of coffee capitalism and buy their own machine.
So we see the legacy of the iconic pot is tarnished by this exchange. Tim effected a socialist revolution in the Cambridge labs by buying a pot, such that the workers could own the Means of Production and free themselves from the tyranny of capitalism (the lab coffee machine). And now, this same socialist icon is being sold like some expensive harlot! You should be ashamed, supporting this betrayal of the Marxist vision of Tim.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
Well, considering that today is in fact August 12th... (the 8th month isn't July)
I just kind of assume that the most likely explanation - that it is the closest date to the current time - is the correct one. I deal with it a lot since I'm American and I'm living in Canada. We have reverse days/months, so I always have to watch for it.
Besides which, the long-form date is on the main news post as well as on every response to it. =)
~ Leilah
This coffee pot is the basis for many modern day porn sites. Quirky huh?
always wanted one of these
2 324">http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2324.txt?number =2324
the RFC
2324 Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0). L. Masinter.
Apr-01-1998. (Format: TXT=19610 bytes) (Status: INFORMATIONAL)
<a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2324.txt?number=
</a>
I wonder if there is a implemetation that is open ?
can anyone point the way ?
regards
john jones
p.s. so sad and they will be moveing in with Microsoft so expect an IIS add on I surpose )-:
If I'd known it would be worth that much, I'd have nicked it when I was working in the lab...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I wonder how many FBI agents had a look-see.
jepps, it was bought bei spiegel.de with fresenius.de as moneygiver. fresenius is the largest manufacturer of medicine-technical devices in the world. the machine will be repaired and brought back online from spiegel-online in hamburg.
Whew, thanks for setting us straight!
I don't quite see how the coffee pot achieved this fame. Maybe what makes history is what is tangible to journalists? And I suppose that's why history will record that Bill Gates invented the Internet and the coffee pot is the first web cam.
The last part the bid history is: ockbert (13) £3,350.00 11-Aug-01 13:39:09 BST ockbert (13) £3,334.00 11-Aug-01 13:38:10 BST afossato (0) £3,250.00 11-Aug-01 13:38:46 BST phlamer (5) £2,700.00 11-Aug-01 13:37:20 BST ockbert (13) £2,666.00 11-Aug-01 13:36:19 BST Why if "ockbert" have a bid of £3,334.00 have to pay £3,350.00 as their winner bid?? There was a reserve price?
ouch, that be quite expensive for a coffee machine...!!! lol.
Is it a boat?
Check here.
They say they plan to repair it and run it with a webcam in some weeks.
Of course the real reason this is happening is that the Trojan Room is no more - the computer lab is moving to a new building. Guess what it's called.... yep you got it " The William Gates Building " Selling the coffee-pot, accepting money from Microsoft.. they must be really desperate!
:)
Thank god I've graduated
[long, critical fetishistic analysis of the coffee pot snipped]
Whoa. Chill. Sometimes a coffee pot is just a coffee pot.
Hmm, could someone tell me what date 8/12/01 translates to? Is it 8 December 2001, 12 July 2001 or 1 December 2008? Okay I am being picky, but since /. is viewable world-wide I reckon it is best to use date formats that can't be confused, even though someone will advocate as to how abvious it is at the mo' given the other dates haven't happened yet.
Surely 2001-08-12 is little less confusing?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
the pot is a piece of history
not all history is full of meaning
but this was something very practical to do with a webcam, and technology goes well with practicality
I guess they'll need updating now...
Actually, old computers are becoming vogue.
But then again, you are likely the sort that would look at a Monet and say 'Bah, it's just a crappy old painting! Who in their right mind would want that!'
The thing is that in our digital culture, someone SHOULD be preserving the 'old junk' Because when that stuff disappears, it's GONE. And nothing can bring it back. Hell, I read somewhere that the US government has volumes and volumes of data from the late eighties that is useless because the hardware to read the floppies has died and there is no way to fix it. What wil we leave for our great grandchildren to help them understand us? At this rate, very little.
Sorry for the rant...
ctrl-alt-f
And it still works in the 0.9.3 (ish - home-built from CVS) version of Mozilla I'm running. It looks like the picture is stuck about 5 weeks out of date - is this a sign that the fishcam is dead?
SAY IT AIN'T SO!
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
When it sells for $5000, it's no longer just a coffee pot.
True. The buyer could have easily picked up a nice little espresso maker for under $5k.
It should have gone straight to a local museum, to be put amongst the other great coffee pots of our era. Perhaps they could have stuck another web cam on it for posterity? One does wonder though why a public (fairly) institution like Cambidge University would auction it off rather than just donate it to a local museum or even the British Science Museum? Perhaps they thought a coffee pot to be rather insignificant. Or perhaps they wanted to join the celebrity rage of the moment - auctioning stuff off and giving a minute fraction of the revenue to a "charity"?
For all you out there not capable of reading German: SPIEGEL Online promised to bring it back online in a few weeks - so they did in fact save it for the people.. EH
It was bought by Spiegel-Online, a german online news service.
The announcement is here (in German - try the babelfish version).
It's no substitute for some serious therapy, but maybe you should take this serial killer profile quiz, and in the meantime avoid any job that involves the Postal Servie.
I'd be interested to know how somebody who wrote most of his work before Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto could be described as a communist pig? Perhaps because he was Russian? Or maybe because he wrote intelligently about a society which is essentially the same as ours today. Sorry I forgot, one mustn't criticise our society or the American thought police will come and moderate you down for thinking for yourself!
My question would be, why did you get rid of it in the first place? Any self respecting geek never gets rid of a functioning piece of technology! Besides, it seems like that would be the kind of thing you would want to keep just for old times' sake.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
The place you probably originally read it was at the register I wonder if that soda machine at MIT that was on the net will ever go up for auction..
When it sells for $5000, it's no longer just a coffee pot.
Defecation occurs.
some slashdot fanatic would pay millions
The fact that you think that people would really care about the first slashdot box is a good indicator of how big some peoples egos have gotten. What you should be doing is making sure that you keep track of the current slashdot box. At least those will still have some actual street value when OSDN goes under and things goto the auction block.
OH NO! I flunked the test and I work for the Postal Service.
Perhaps. I think it's a little bizarre to have this whole I-own-a-piece-of-history-even-though-it's-just-a-c offee-pot fetish. What's next? Auctioning off Richard Stallman's underwear? Oh wait, he doesn't wear any, just a sari. But you get my point.
No, it's not dead. It's resting.
And what is so wrong with Capitalism? It is the foundation of our economy! Capitalism means getting other peoples stuff - be it labor or coffee pots or money. The best way is when you give someone something of little or no value for something else of higher value. It is a form of ethical theft. Theft and killing are bad but we do both to first survive, and second to enjoy surviving.
Museums are full of stuff that can potentially be capitalized upon. But there it sits with everyone who wants to able to enjoy it. It is almost as if everyone owns what is in the museum. Everyone owning everything = Communism.
The Bush Administration is being lobbied by an organization on a bill which would make it much easier to privatize the contents of existing museums and sell the items on the open market. Property must be privately owned! This includes the national parks which are just filled with resources of all kinds. This would be just in time to save our fumbling economy.
Why is this group so very much against Capitalism? First you all bitch and moan about Microsoft making an honest buck and then you try to advance Open Source software which can not be capitalized upon. RedHat and others are trying and will unfortunately fail. But I hope like hell they do succeed so that Microsoft will acquire them and finally get a handle on the problem. And yes I do own Microsoft stock in case you are wondering so how do you like me now? I'm a Capitalist and I'm proud of it!!
The coke machine was at CMU (in the grad CS lounge); you could finger it to see the quantity of soda and their temperature.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt
> the short-sighted "owners" of the pot You mean the "actual owners"? The pot was run by a group of people who paid weekly to be in their "coffee club". Also, the actual pot wasn't the original pot, so it in itself would be pretty misplaced in a museum, perhaps under a sign "the last of the first webcam coffee pots". Its best legacy is that the code and hardware specs were publically available, and probably inspired one or two people along the way.
Selling a broken pot is hardly what I'd call destructive capitalism... the CUCL offer afternoon tea and biscuits for something trivial like 12p and 2p respectively, and Tim mentions that they want to shun the ultimate symbol of coffee capitalism and buy their own machine.
Taco: how about auctioning off that other historical gem of the Internet Era: the Slashdot Cruiser? Where did that thing end up, anyway?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
This coffee pot can't even make coffee- it leaks water, according to the EBAY ad.
Well, but Spiegel Online intends to repair the machine and set it up again to make coffee, so at least be again as the pot emptied and refilled it was a metaphor for productivity.
Maybe it makes you a little bit more happy to know this.
I used to have one of these and Iloved it, I started quite a few cool things on mine before I moved to a PIII.... Lemme See -
I had the Jennicam Activty monitor - a site which basically did comparisons between images coming from Jennicam.org and attempted to measure activity on the camera - I got this on a crappy internet TV show - I got a Free trip to Bournemouth of all places.
There's the complete solar system map which still runs at http://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/neomap.html - this plots the position of all the planets *and* minor planets (about 100,000 now) every day.
Finally - I did my first live mp3 show from this machine (This predated shoutcast by two years) - Back in those days it took almost 90% of my cpu to encode the stream at 16kbit, it didn't sound particularly good either. Fortunately the broadcast was over a 128kbit connection so I couldn't sustain enough clients to cause any serious load on the server component.
Anyone want to buy the machine which had the world's first live mp3 radio station? Anyone want the DJ to come and play at your party?
Being bought by a German news service, I'm sure the cash will come through. I wonder when Netscape will auction off the fishcam? :)
Anyone remember the secret fishcam url/key combo?
æeee!
Wasn't there something else like this with a coke machine also? Or am I complete off track.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
...will
---
And then maybe post the news as a story on the main page.
And include a link so that we can all go look at what it used to look like when the number of visitors was in the order of about 10^2.
Hmmmmm......
I'd also like to suggest that they set up a webcam pointing at the old box, so that we can all watch it burst into flames and be totally beyond repair thanks to a heavy slashdotting starting moments after the link to it is posted, as it tries to handle thousands more hits than it was ever designed to take.
Kinda like a viking funeral, only without the boat.
2324 Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0). L. Masinter. Apr-01-1998. (Format: TXT=19610 bytes) (Status: INFORMATIONAL) http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2324.txt?number =2324
Museums are already overflowing. The Smithsonian has more things in storage that on display to a ratio of 10:1 in certain departments. Why add to that? and why with a coffeepot?
The internet is a transient being. It is a constantly changing landscape whose historians are the users on it. The CoffeePot website will serve as more than an adequate reminder and is accesible to all people at all times (well, sans the government moderated internets in the far east). Placing this in a museum would be simply a waste of space.
// john athayde
# x@boboroshi.com
# http://www.boboroshi.com/
If I could figure out where Arial, my old DEC Alpha Multia that was the original Slashdot, I would auction that off and give the cash to the EFF (minus shipping a cost of a case of beer ;) Dave? Rosie? Where did that thing go? I know it was finally retired as the SMTP server... I probably should get it back someday ;)
Have you checked behind the dry wall?
I don't think it's the original coffee pot, there have actually been several over the years. This is supposed to have been the longest-serving though. Can't find the reference for this fact, it was somewhere on either the Cambridge University site or on Ebay though...
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
No, for $5,000, its an espresso machine
*yawn* Typical American, educated by the media. Now, name one single reason why communism would be pejorative.
Gotcha! Come back the day you get opinions of your own American boy.
"More money than sense"
It's the only possible explanation!
"Information wants to be paid"
I can seem someone doing this to it (as seen here).
Just to take out a few frustrations
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
is http://www.netscape.com/fishcam/ for the uninitiated.
The creation of a false geek culture is at hand. There are many things, such as science fiction like Dune, that merit the slavering worship of Slashdotters. Dune for instance brings up many pressing scientific and ethical issues.
This coffee pot does not.
It's rather a fetish, a symbol for religious worship in the attempt to create community. It is supposed to radiate defiance and humor, but it doesn't. It's rather empty in fact.
It's not the first webcam, the coffee pot is the object of observation of the first webcam. It glorified a culture of work, actually, business culture in geekdom before it existed; people would drink the coffee, and as the pot emptied and refilled it was a metaphor for productivity.
It's like selling the dust that someone scraped up from the NASA lab when they were testing a Mars camera. It's not the dust from Mars, but an adjunct to the technical process in developing a Mars camera. Its meaning is borrowed and tenuous.
The actual web cam would be a better auction item, at least it would have some interesting technical value. This coffee pot can't even make coffee- it leaks water, according to the EBAY ad. In fact, it may not even be the real Trojan coffee pot, unless you are one of those geeks who has some snapshots of the motherfucker on your hard drive somewhere, in which case you are the exact sort of geek I am decrying against here. You are fetishizing the meaningless and debasing the real meaning all the while.
Geeks are supposed to be separate from the self-referentialism, fake romance, and vapidity of the modern age. Act like it.
Goat sex free since 2001
It might just be a skewed perspective because of the obscene number of forms I've had to fill out... the Canadian government's forms in particular all use a day/month/year format.
~ Leilah