Slashdot Mirror
Computer Folklore, Circa 1984
savetz writes "The full text of the classic 1984 computer book Digital Deli, The Comprehensive, User-Lovable Menu of Computer Lore, Culture, Lifestyles and Fancy, is now on the Web. (Autstralian mirror) A wonderful look at technology culture in the golden age of the microcomputer. 20 other old computer books are at the site, too."
1984 is not that old, the Mac and IBM PC were already out, for heaven's sake! 1984 is long after real classics like the Kim-1, Sinclair ZX80, and Apple II appeared. The real golden age of microcomputing was when you could fit the entire OS, basic interpreter and maybe a game or two into 8 K of RAM. Back then, a budding nerd could easily understand what every single chip and instruction did.
Real men use PEEK, POKE, and GOTO!
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
He sure was dead on about the future. Quote Below:
They call us pirates and worse. They lock up their programs behind hardware and software schemes. They set the minions of the law upon us. And still we flourish by our wiles.
Ahoy, ye microlubbers: to pirate a program is not to steal, but to liberate knowledge. We don't take money or goods from anyone; we merely free up information. Most of us don't profit from our buccaneering activities; instead, we share the wealth with our fellow computer users.
The software moguls have only themselves to blame for our cracking open the bars to their programs. If they didn't charge a king's ransom for disks that cost a pittance to duplicate, there would be little incentive for us to practice our skills. There would be no need for them to protect their programs if software were no more expensive than what you and I can afford to pay.
We are no longer in the Dark Ages of personal software, when so few people used computers that program development costs had to be defrayed by high unit prices. Now so many microcomputers are in use that a program should cost no more than a lightweight paperback novel. Instead, we are paying illuminated manuscript prices.
Maybe someday the software publishers will understand how they're killing off the golden goose. But until that time, be warned: there will be many a pirate's flag on the software horizon.
JOLLY ROGER
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch