Slashdot Mirror
Librarians Fighting to Save Moore's Law Issue
wambaugh writes "As
reported earlier, Intel is offering $10,000 for a copy of the April 19, 1965 issue of Electronics containing Moore's original article predicting
'Moore's Law.' Now it is
being reported that
academic science libraries are having to
make sure no go-getters make off with their copies. At least one
copy is
already missing from the University of Illinois. Too bad Intel won't settle for a pdf."
Lo and behold... brothers of Slashdot; here is an Ebay auction with an alleged copy of the Electronics mag from 1965, that (purportedly) did not come from a library.
My grand-pappy used to say, "if it looks too good to be true, it is." I'm guessing that Intel's prerequisite about having an intact magazine will put this auction out of the running for the $10k prize, as the pages are all put in anti-acid sleeves, according to the seller.
Not sure if it's legit but if Intel wants to save a buck or two they might call an emergency meeting and head over to buy it. Unless this auction is a hoax. Caveat Emptor sirrahs...
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
of being a few blocks from Grainger (the library from which the U of I copy was stolen). I spend quite a good deal of time there, it's really unfortunate.
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Why doesn't Intel just buy it off some library for 'permanent loan,' like in a museum?
Or for that matter, why not just post a copy of it, nobody will know/care that its really the one.
Eh! FP?
"At least one copy is already missing from the University of Illinois. Too bad Intel won't settle for a pdf."
Too bad some people have no ethics, or morality.
Welcome to humanity. Hope you enjoy your stay.
Didn't these people ever stop and think about how suspicious it will look when Intel sees the "property of Massachusetts Institute of Technology libraries" stamp? Talk about dumb criminals.
Hear recorded Slashdot headlines on your phone! New service beta testing. Just call (248) 434-5508
how is this news? Intel only wants *one* issue, so at most one copy will be stolen, the library marks erased, and exchanged for $10,000 cash. Any other attempts will be late and fall flat.
If I'm not mistaken, reports of this appeared a day or two after the original request. So, this is a bit old.
For $10K too bad the Libraries can't settle for pdfs.
No, I am a karma whore.
All your Sybase are belong to us.
As a fellow Illini I understand the feeling, and I have an especially strong feeling on this particular issue. As it happens, after reading about the Moore's law article on Slashdot I popped into the library on one of my regular trips, actually found the book and read through it (though I didn't walk off with it!). Part of me wanted to take it down to the desk and suggest that it be kept under lock and key for a few weeks, but for some reason I didn't act on that instinct, and boy do I feel dumb. The next day it walked away =(
It engaged me. I am better for having read it. Thank you.
Intel did this as a marketing ploy -- only. They set aside $10k for one copy of the Electronics mag, knowing all sorts of them would go missing, thus increasing the value of *their* copy, while creating quite a stir. Intel will put it up for auction since the value was increased, or they might keep it around, collecting value.
The funny thing is... they are getting a lot of press over this, so it's a very successful advertising campaign, and for the LOW PRICE of only $10,000. Compared to some ad campaigns? That's NOTHING!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
A day after Intel said it would offer $10,000 for a copy of a magazine in which Moore's Law was first announced, a University of Illinois engineering library noticed that one of its two copies had disappeared.
So it was actually stolen in April 20, 1965 - however intels' shananigans prompted them to go look.
Am I the only one who misread the Subject?
I had visions of otherwise demure, bookish girls wearing glasses duking it out in a wafer fab plant before tumbling over a workbench into a pit of jelly...
Dialectician. Archology.
Am I the only one who misread the title like that? O_o
"For $10K too bad the Libraries can't settle for pdfs. I'm sure libraries would gladly settle for PDFs if all it cost were $10,000."
Well the object lesson of this story is that given a chance, some people will act unethically. Problem with that is that others who wouldn't think of acting improperly still suffer because of those individuals actions. If you can get the majority to act ethically (that means not only not swiping library magazine copies, but not being a buyer of such goods)? Then the market will be much more receptive to giving the honest customer what they want. So what unethical/immoral acts have you prevented today?
RTFA...and scroll.
"Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits"
(Acrobat PDF file, 167 KB)
Author: Gordon E. Moore
Publication: Electronics, April 19, 1965
ftp://download.intel.com/research/silicon/moorespa per.pdf
It's really unfortunate that you didn't steal it when you had the chance?
I worked in a library for 9 years, it's funny what people steal. The Mason's steal all of the books revealing their secret rites, the Scientologists do something similar to the books on cults.
We had a lovely old stitch bound book on FORTRAN that walked when some local geeks attempted to start a computer museum! WHY!?
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
This is where you need a Tome Raider.
[Enter, stage left, busty librarian with guns on her hips]
Sheesh. No wonder AMD is spanking them.
Save the libraries! Grab the T-Bar!
Intel would pull this to increase the value of their mag? Please. Even if it went up 100 fold, almost an impossibility, it would still be peanuts to Intel. They had 35 billion dollars in revenue last year and 16 billion dollars in the bank. Playing silly auction games for what would make them no more than 10-20 grand is just not worth their time.
I need to impress you, and I feel dirty about it.
Thanks for your time.
..and the same people will steal that first.
It may even be lower than $10,000. Nobody will check up whether they actually pay for it, or maybe they will withdraw the offer 'because they don't want to encourage theft', or maybe they have a shill ready.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
This is a librarian's nightmare.
It's so lovely to find pages torn (or carefully cut with an Xacto blade) out of a book or periodical...NOT! The greed of one person - in this case for $10,000 - destroys a reference material shared by all.
Hey Intel, why not donate $10,000 to every library which had this article stolen.
As soon as I read the ad on ebay, I check my library. They had a copy, and I reserved it.
:)
When picking it up, the computer told the librarian that it could not be lend out, since it was a rare item. The librarian frowned and aussumed it had to be an error. I got the magazine anyway.
Instead of stealing it, I made few good color scans and returned the magazine
The raw scans (tiff, 100Mb): http://laudy.net/moore.zip
Cleaned version(tiff, 100Mb):
http://laudy.net/moore_clean.zip
1.7 Mb/file Jpg version:
http://laudy.net/moore_jpg.zip
This year, we had a copy of the article and a great basketball team.
:\
Next year we'll have neither
Which reminds me... I really must return that magazine I borrowed. It's 40 years overdue.
A librarian in a Science Library in Bumfuck Illinois, who doesn't read Slashdot, and who wouldn't put this together as an obvious risk (or opportunity to gain some notariety for the Library and the University for saving the day, not to mention the reward money!), should be ashamed.
Seriously. You work in a Science Library, and you don't read Slashdot, like, checking it every minute?
You are a fucking retard.
would have to say about Moore's law. A much celebrated "law" that continuosly changes to adapt to reality. Ignorant morons.
Evolution of Language Through The Ages: 6000 BC : ungh, grrf, booga 2000 AD : grep, awk, sed
Intel already has the pdf for the article. You can find it on their web site at http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.ht m
Not as cool as the poster that scanned the original into tiff form, but still a lot easier to deal with than going to the library to see the original.
is that anyhow better than the pdf file?
s pa per.pdf
ftp://download.intel.com/research/silicon/moore
moorespaper.pdf
Hopefully somebody trying to submit an issue stolen from a library would be turned in and charged with 'theft over $5000'. Placing a note to that effedt (in 8pt text) should be enough to deter most would-be thieves.
"Note: theft over $5000 is punnishible by up to 10 years in jail."
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Dear slashdot readers,
Knowing the intelligence of the average slashdotter, I have no doubt that you can see it when fortune smiles at you! This is a once-in-a-lifetime deal, bigger then any enlargement of your penis!
I hereby want to inform you, that I make an honest offer of the luxurious sum of 1 EURO for a copy of the April 19, 1965 issue of Electronics. This offer expires when Intel has bought (or agreed to buy) a similar copy of a person other then me, or redraws or cancels its own offer.
sincerely,
Newsbyte
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
I was about to say it's not THAT kind of law
Dear Sir,
We have in our possession several rare copies of the April 19, 1965 issue of Electronics. We would wish to offer these copies on the open market however we are restricted by the Nigerian Government regulations from making direct efforts to sell. We are seeking an interested third party who can solicit buyers on our behalf.
An interested person must be prepared to hold the entire purchase price in trust for us and will receive a modest renumeration for time and efforts spent.
For security reasons I would only deal with whom am sure is ready and knows how to do offshore business which is the reason I contacted you. Please acknowledge receipt and preferably interest in this and I will give you the full details for your assistance.
KINDLY TREAT THIS REQUEST AS VERY IMPORTANT AND STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL. I HONESTLY ASSURE YOU THAT THIS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL AND RISK-FREE.
Thanks.
Ahmed Hassan (Alhaji)
N/B: Please disregard my communication if you have no interest in this.
Well, at least he's up front about it. >8)
Honesty is the best policy.
I worked at UIUC as a graduate assistant when I went to library school. Missing volumes or articles ripped from journals aren't that uncommon. In fact, they subscribe to a document delivery service that is designed to address this very issue.
Practically every academic library doesn't lend out serials because of the fact that many of the journals a library subscribes to are irreplaceable should they be lost or stolen. No opportunity to try out the, "Oh, I lost it" option. So, people would need to make a concerted effort to steal this volume - and then deal with all the other issues such needing to have a way to mask its origins.
Of course, people that would steal it in the first place wouldn't necessarily think out all these issues. So, if they actually got it out in the first place, they would likely dump it when they realized they couldn't do anything with it - or Intel referred them to the police.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4472549.stm
The BBC are reporting that a British engineer has "won" the auction. The link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4472549.stm
Todd: I hope it proves as delicious as the farmers that grew them
Am I the only person that saw the word librarians and instantaneously drawn to this article?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4472549.stm
My web domain.
not a floating point error, perhaps?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4472549.stm
A copy of the original Electronics magazine in which Moore's Law was first published has turned up under the floorboards of a Surrey engineer.
David Clark had kept copies of the magazine for years, despite pleas from his wife to throw them away.
Now the couple are celebrating after collecting the $10,000 reward which was offered on eBay by chip maker Intel.
I bit late aren't we but congrats to the engineer who found it
Looks like a UK man found a copy stashed away somewhere,
Moore's law original issue found
Nice payback for being a hoarder.. I wonder if Intel took him up on the offer of being able to deliver it in person to Dr Moore.
No, the OP is right. Someone at Intel screwed up. I'm sure they had the best of intentions, but they did inadvertently encourage criminal behaviour. I'm sure they can afford some kind of compensation to the library that had their copy plundered, the good PR that would result would more than outbalance the cost.
I just checked my library and they indeed have a copy, albeit in bound journal form. It's marked in the system as "LIB USE ONLY" so it probably means they wouldn't let me out of library with it. Bummer.
It's OK to go into the library and copy the article. Hey, most libraries even put machines there exactly for that purpose!
Of course removing the original is bad. It's bad because it removes from others the possibility to access the information.
Think about it: Would you say going into a museum and making photos of the painting is morally the same as going into a museum and taking the paintings themselves?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
...his own personal copyright infringement on his own personal server.
I'm presently reading a 1966 edition of Destination Void by Frank Herbert, which descibes the creation of a software ariticial intelligence to replace three failed brains onboard the space ship Earthling.
I wonder if AMD's interested?
A similar situation happened recently in the University of Toronto library. A fellow who lives only blocks from the library heard about the "reward" and remembering that the library had a copy he went to check it out. It was in perfect shape. So he informed the library staff about what was happening.
The library contacted Intel and told them they had a copy, and the condition of said copy. Intel asked them if they would be willing to sell, and the library said no, but they would certainly be willing to loan them their copy if they were interested.
A reporter asked the library why they wouldn't sell. "Ten thousand dollars can buy a lot of books" they said. The library curator politely told the reporter that if they did that then members of the community wouldn't be able to enjoy this particular magazine anymore, and that they weren't in the business of selling books, they were in the business of buying books and making them available to the public.
Speak slower and use big hand gestures....
Not that hand gesture though....
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
Didn't these people ever stop and think about how suspicious it will look when Intel sees the "property of Massachusetts Institute of Technology libraries" stamp?
Because there is no such stamp in magazines stolen from the UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. Talk about dumb slashdot posters.
paintball
I read this as Liberals fighting to save Moore's Law Issue. Now that would have been a YRO...
Intel better not pay out on any library copies...
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
If Intel wants some good press, it might be good gesture for them to buy an extra copy and donate it to the U of I.
Of course I'm not sure that issue wasn't bound with several others that were taken along with it.
If some good can come of this, is that this is at least bringing attention to the need to preserve and archive part of electronics and computing.
How many other articles of seminal importance to the field are lying under an engineers floorboards, to be destroyed by time? Really, we should take better care of our past, instead of having to wait for Intel to offer a bounty to be reminded of how much that past is really worth.
Try collecting stamps or coins.. That's what makes the nature of a collectible. One (very small) batch of nickles gets printed with the head upside down and make it out of the mint. .. The coins before and after are worth precisely $.05. The small batch of 'different' ones are worth thousands.
I don't set the price for these things, but if I find one, you can bet your butt that I'd be happy to sell it to the highest bidder (who has far more spare cash than I).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Try? I have an extensive collection of coins and bills. They go clear back to Roman coins. I have some funky $1 bills too. Silver certificates, railroad money, silver coins and so on. So much that I have it secured in a vault. I know the value of this stuff. That is why I'm telling you that Magazine isn't worth $5,000. Intel threw that amount out there to motivate people fast. That it did. Those markets vary greatly. I have seen others make a handsome sum on something that I own. I sure couldn't get the same amount. Do you honesly think that if you had a copy of that 1965 magazine you could get $10,000? $5,000? $1,000? If you do, let me know who bought it. I have some selling to do.
Fuck you, when I posted that no one else had mentioned it was a repost.
- there are very few left, and
- somebody wants it badly enough that they're willihg to pay big money for it
That's part of the reason why the value of collectibles are so volatile -- People are more willing to pay big money for them when they're in the news, or it's an important anniversary, or the whim strikes them really hard (and they have the money).Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.