As to trading a working Altair for $15K worth of Dell crap; I wouldn't even think of it. It's easily worth that much on eBay -- and you could buy a bunch of really good stuff for a lot less and pocket the change.
Ooh, I'm sorry... nice try! But hey, thanks for playing, and better luck next time!
The mouse was invented at xerox,
Bzzzt. Try SRI (Stanford Research Institute) by Doug Englebart and his team. Yes, several of them went on to Xerox's PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) where the mouse was put to use on the Alto, Star, and other groundbreaking machines.
Check out:
Doug Englebart's Unfinished Revolution at http://unrev.stanford.edu
The joystick wasn't really invented, it started as a game paddle on the apple. (It's not really all the much of an invention, just a capistor/variable-resistor timing circut.
Bzzzt. Actually, early joysticks were even simpler -- an array of four switches activated by the single, central stick. I believe first developed by the military well before Woz/Jobs were even born.
I met Scott McCartney on a book tour -- smart guy who did a lot of research. A book well worth picking up.
Of course, everyone ought to take the time to learn a bit about their history at the Vintage Computer Festival. While you're at it, check out some of the great computer history sites like Blinkenlights, the Home Computer Museum, and Jim Willing's Computer Garage. And don't forget the Computer History Association of California.
Of course, you should also check out my classic computer collection as well (plug, plug).
Hmmm... All the HTML seems to be getting stripped, for some reason, so here are all the URL's again just in case:
Vintage Computer Festival http://www.vintage.org/
Blinkenlights Archeological Institute http://www.blinkenlights.com/
Home Computer Museum http://www.homecomputermuseum.com/
Jim Willing's Computer Garage http://www.computergarage.com/
Computer History Association of California http://www.chac.org/
What does it matter in this case if Framing someone elses site is a violation of that sites copyright? The ASCAP doesn't represent the radio stations, whose copyrights are the ones being violated by this definition.
It's not the radio stations' copyrights, they're only the licensees. The copyrights belong to the artists (and/or ASCAP). If I'm not mistaken, ASCAP's job is (supposedly) to protect the rights of its members.
Of course, it sounds like ASCAP is more interested in protecting its revenue streams than its members rights.
The problem here is that nobody violated any copyrights.
Copyright ownership gives you control of how and whom your intellectual property can be used. Generally, this means that if you write a cool song or paint a spiffy picture, Microsoft can't just come along and use it in their ads.
If you want, you can let anyone who wants to use your IP any way they want, or you can pick specific entities that can use it. You can even say "I'll let you use this, but you have to pay me X dollars." (You can also say "I'll let you use this, but your entire board of directors has to take a mud bath with me, buck naked" but I doubt they'll go for it.)
If they go ahead and use it anyway, or use it without asking, that's a copyright violation.
ASCAP is claiming that because the content was framed with TravelFinder's name (and advertising) rather than the original licensee, then TravelFinder was not just pointing and saying "you can find a spiffy song over here," but saying instead, "Here, listen to this spiffy song we've got for you."
The first requires no licensing; the latter does. (According to ASCAP)
Whether there is or isn't a copyright violation is still up in the air. ASCAP is claiming there is.
I'm glad you stretch before doing all that typing...
It appears that that ["ASCAP wants to shutdown the WWW"] is their eventual aim.
And how do you come to this amazing conclusion?
But now we have ASCAP stepping in and saying that if I'm setting up a little page saying how much I like They Might Be Giants, and I want to link to emusic.com where they have some sample clips of TMBG music that they sell (legally), I have to pay a license fee...
No. What ASCAP is saying is that you cannot put a link on your page directly to those sample clips and pass them off as if they were your own. To do so, you would need to pay ASCAP licensing fees for distributing their member's music. As you said, "There are a lot of issues with framing other people's content, especially if you put ads in those border frames." ASCAP is claiming that one of those issues is that you need to pay licensing fees for those other people's (ASCAP members) content.
We could have online newspapers demanding you pay a fee to post links to their stories on your web page.
Actually, I believe there was a case wherein the Wall Street Journal sued another site which was posting WSJ stories within their frameset as if they were the other site's original work.
This, by the way, is what ASCAP is claiming is happening here. But you don't care about that, or you would have spent a smidgeon of time reading the actual article, instead of a whole lot of time shooting your mouth off.
As for ASCAP's guidelines for linking to their own site, most of them are just nice wordings of existing laws (copyright and others). btw, when they say false, they're talking factually false, not your inane opinions.
The last two, dealing with infringing and offensive sites, are probably not legally enforceable, but entirely understandable. What they're saying is that they would prefer you didn't say something like "these songs stolen from ASCAP members!" on your warez site, or similarly link from a porno site.
I imagine it should be just a simple case of ASCAP SHUTTING THE FUCK UP. Who gives a shit about ASCAP. What do they do to benefit society? NOTHING, they aid in destroying it for everyone except those with deep pockets. I can only think of a few ways to deal with groups like this, leave the country that supports these assholes, or blow their goddamned brains (if they have any, yeah right) out. That's what eventually happens when you bully someone. Look at Littleton.
Well, to answer what ASCAP does, here's a quote from their web page (I wasn't entirely sure before, though I had sort of a vague idea):
ASCAP's function is to protect the rights of its members by licensing and paying royalties for the public performances of their copyrighted works.
So what does that mean? Well, let's say you're a guy with a guitar, and you really want to be a rock star. You write some songs, dump 'em to CD, and give some to your friends. Maybe you even play a couple of gigs at the local pub.
Okay, so now your parents (who wanted you to be a doctor or a lawyer) say that it's time you moved out and got your own place (after all, you are in your mid-20's.)
So you and a couple of buds get this really rocking place downtown. You're playing and having a great time, until the landlord asks for the rent. So now you have to get a job, and you don't have much time for playing.
But you still listen to the radio at work, right? Well, one day, you hear your song being played on the radio! Cool! Now you can quit your job and get that limo with the hot tub in the back. Only, the radio station isn't paying you anything.
They don't have to, because they're a big corporation, and you're just a nobody making minimum wage. They've got lots of lawyers, you don't even know any lawyers.
Then a record label hears it, and gets one of their house musicians (or some soap opera star) to sing it and they have a huge hit on their hands. And they pay you nothing. Their lawyers say they wrote it, and they'll happily go to court over it.
So you wander the streets telling people that you wrote that hit song, but the record company stole it, and they just shake their heads and cross the street. Your parents call once a week to remind you how they said you should become a lawyer...
ASCAP purports to be a grouping of composers, authors, and publishers that has banded together to prevent this sort of thing happening.
Perhaps they've gotten too big for their britches, and perhaps they're not doing a good job, but to say they offer no benefit is ludicrous and inane.
This sounds like charging the people who make radios because it appears like the radio is broadcasting the music.
Only if the radio automatically replaced the call letters of the radio station with, for example, "Panasonic".
It's more like if someone set up a search engine with their logo, their name, their advertisers, but all the form did was pass stuff to AltaVista or Google, collect the results, and display them with, again, their logo, their name, and their advertisers.
Or, look at it this way. Suppose you developed a cool on-line game. You buy some servers, get a T-1, line up some advertising to pay for it all. All is going well. Until you notice your T-1 is jam-packed but no one's seeing your ads.
Turns out, someone else put up a front end page to your game, with their own ads. You did all the development, bought the server, and are paying for the bandwidth, but they're getting the profits. They're using your resources for their own personal gain.
It's the same as SPAM.
Only, with IP theft thrown in.
This is a sore point for me, as I know of at least one site that does this with one of my sites, and it's going to start happening a lot. Unless you can afford to pay lawyers all the time, there's not a lot you can do about it.
Of course, as I said before, I'm not sure ASCAP is the one that should be getting their panties in a bunch about it. They're just greedy.
It sounds like they are intentionally ignoring the obvious fact that the music is coming from somewhere else. In effect, charging someone a royalty just over the look and feel of their site.
I don't think they're ignoring the fact that it's coming from somewhere else -- I think they're claiming it's not obvious it's coming from somewhere else, and therefore, TravelFinder is essentially repackaging the content as their own.
Mind you, I don't necessarily agree that ASCAP is the entity that should be getting their panties in a bunch, but I understand their viewpoint.
The concept of Web rings (at least as far as music related ones) would be shut down. Effectively killing the free advertising they provide.
No, web rings (and what we mean by "links") only point you to content elsewhere -- not provide that content for you.
To limit that, of course, would be amazingly stupid on ASCAP's part, and I don't think they're stupid.
ASCAP said it appeared TravelFinder.com was hosting the musical broadcast, since Cook linked to the sites through a frame on his page. While the outside menu bar was TravelFinder's, the actual broadcasts were from elsewhere.
ASCAP is claiming that TravelFinder was displaying the broadcast within its frameset, giving the impression that the broadcast originated from TravelFinder.
Imagine if you made, say, a really spiffy Got Milk parody featuring Yoda, and someone else displayed it on their site, within a frame, so that although the image was coming from your site, it looked like it was their's. You'd be pissed, right?
To a lesser extent, this is what ASCAP is claiming. I suspect their position is that if you are going to broadcast "their" music, you have to pay the licensing fees, whether you got it as a free promo CD, from the local record store, or as an internet feed from another site.
Mind you, I'm not saying ASCAP is entirely correct, but it doesn't sound like it's a simple case of "you put a link to my site on your page, so you owe me."
Okay, I am not a lawyer, but I do watch Ally McBeal.
First off, It seems unlikely to me that Harvard, with a reputation of being an excellent law school, would destroy evidence if some sort of wrong-doing had been done. They really ought to know better.
But, if they did wipe the site completely, Ken has nothing to worry about in terms of lawsuits (without evidence, it's all he-said-she-said), disciplinary action from Harvard (he's not a student), or loss of his job (no reason, because there's no evidence).
Furthermore, I suspect he would have a good case against Harvard for destruction of his site, including the loss of his schoolwork. (Can you say Harvard is a cracker?) If I were on a jury, I'd certainly have Harvard pay him enough so he wouldn't have to worry about his schooling being screwed up.
If, however, Harvard does have a copy, then there is a possibility of a lawsuit happening. In which case, Ken Williams has really nothing to worry about from Harvard claiming he cracked their systems -- even the world's worst lawyer could get a judge/jury to see that 400K hits could not go unnoticed. If Harvard knew about it, they must have approved of it.
That would leave only the alledgedly libelous material. Which, if it was as John Vranesevich claims, than KW deserves whatever he gets. If it is not, than JV should be rightly counter-sued.
My guess is that Harvard pulled the server and is preventing KW access until they can determine what's what. If there really was libellous material, they certainly don't want KW to go and erase it.
Smart moves by Apple, this will generate interest in Mac, and give them free exposure. I may have to donate my Apple ][ for this.
Except that Apple Corp. has absolutely nothing to do with this. The computers are all being sold by private individuals. (Jef Raskin and (possibly) Computer Jones.)
If it were Apple, a smarter move would have been to donate them. (Which they have done in the past.)
Rumour has it that this Apple I (and the "GLM" and the "prototype" Lisa) belong to a guy named Computer Jones. If so, I wouldn't even claim it was a real Apple I, let alone the first without checking with Wozniak first.
I also don't care for the spamming LaSalle did to computer collectors to promote this. (I certainly didn't need their multi-meg attachments.)
But hey, there's not a lot I wouldn't do for $40k.
the more suckers who buy into flat panel displays the lower CRTs are going to cost.
Um, no. In the short term, perhaps CRT manufacturers will lower prices to keep people buying CRT's, but at some point in the near future the switch will be made -- LCD's will become the norm and the CRT the oddity. At that time, CRT prices will go up as sales dwindle and factories are converted.
10gig IDE hard drives are easily had for a hundred bucks, but if you needed a new Widespread LCD acceptance will only serve to increase the price of CRT's. Sorry.
Now that my ValueColor is dying, we need to get more people buying flat panels.
Once the price of LCD's really start to fall, there will, of course, be a glut of used monitors on the market -- if you don't mind that purpley-look.
Personally, I look forward to the death of the last vacuum tube!
It looks just like the Monorail. Kinda neat, but no biggie.
Personally, I have a 17" monitor, MS Natural Keyboard, and a Logitech Trackman Marble hooked up to four -- yes four -- computers: My Linux box (what I'm using to write this), My MS-DOS/Win3.11 laptop (my main computer), My voicemail system, and my linux-based network gateway. One of these days I'll get around to hooking up a Win95 box to play with.
I'm using a OmniView switch box, of course. With something like the NEC, you need to make room for multiple keyboards, screens, mice, etc. to use multiple computers.
I see these as handy in places like the foyer to leave messages to housemates/spouses/kids, etc, or other household/general business tasks.
This is a museum piece... ...And it should be placed in a museum.
Actually, the former does not necessarily imply the latter. There is a never-ending debate about the value of museums. On the one hand, they are excellent for making artifacts accessible to the general public.
On the other hand, however, they are often under-funded and lacking adequate space. It is not unusual to find incredibly important items locked in a back room, or even worse -- left out in a storage yard, due to lack of display space and lack of knowledge on the part of the curators.
As an alternative, private collectors do it because they care about the items personally. They spend their own money to rescue artifacts and restore them lovingly.
Of course, none of these are always the case, but my own personal feeling is that I'd rather see something like this go to a collector who knows what they are doing rather than a museum that will stick it in a plexiglass box so the public can watch it decay.
No, really, this should probably be donated to the Smithsonian.
Well, if you have to donate it, I would recommend the Vintage Technology Cooperative (which puts on the Vintage Computer Festival mentioned in the article.)
Of course, it's a moot point as it belongs to a private citizen who is free to do with it what he wants. But you're welcome to bid on it, purchase it, and donate it yourself.
As was mentioned in the article, an attendee at last year's Vintage Computer Festival bought one for $2,000. (The buyer wants to remain anonymous.)
I have heard of confirmed sales in the $10K area, and there was apparently an auction some time ago where one sold for something like $30K (I seem to remember Woz being involved?)
This one will probably sell for $40K or more -- there are some very well financed collectors running around these days.
There are other contenders for "first" computer, going back to the 30's, but that's not really my area of interest, so I haven't paid much attention to them, I'm afraid.
Anyway, here's a few more British historical computing links for those who like nostaligia. If anyone would like to add some links to sites about other historical computers- of any nation- I'd be most interested.
Here are a few more links that you may find of interest:
Before I became an adult, I used to like these amaretto cookies. Of course, they don't have any alcohol in them, so they are available at any grocer's.
Meanwhile, I am an amateur musician. The cables running around my keyboards and synths look like anarchy itself. I don't play that much anymore. We have a friend living with us who has a babe of 10 months who just loves banging on things. She crawls around in her bare feet and likes watching leave it to beaver.
I'm afraid I have a bit of a beer belly, so I don't wear the bikini style swimsuits I did in high school. I guess that's what happens when you sit around compiling source code into binaries instead of throwing a long bomb on the football field. Oh well, I haven't hit bottom yet, while my wife is no blondebombshell, she's pretty good looking.
My bud and I were chatting the other day about how he should get one of those bra things for the front of his cherry red corvette. Then his twin girls came out to show us pictures of the the baby chicks they had hatched at school.
I'm kinda glad I don't live in Oz -- I'd never be able to put out the San Francisco Free List.
Slashdot Mirror
As to trading a working Altair for $15K worth of Dell crap; I wouldn't even think of it. It's easily worth that much on eBay -- and you could buy a bunch of really good stuff for a lot less and pocket the change.
Bzzzt. Try SRI (Stanford Research Institute) by Doug Englebart and his team. Yes, several of them went on to Xerox's PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) where the mouse was put to use on the Alto, Star, and other groundbreaking machines.
Check out:
Doug Englebart's Unfinished Revolution at http://unrev.stanford.edu
Bzzzt. Actually, early joysticks were even simpler -- an array of four switches activated by the single, central stick. I believe first developed by the military well before Woz/Jobs were even born.
Of course, everyone ought to take the time to learn a bit about their history at the Vintage Computer Festival. While you're at it, check out some of the great computer history sites like Blinkenlights, the Home Computer Museum, and Jim Willing's Computer Garage. And don't forget the Computer History Association of California.
Of course, you should also check out my classic computer collection as well (plug, plug).
Hmmm... All the HTML seems to be getting stripped, for some reason, so here are all the URL's again just in case:
Vintage Computer Festival
http://www.vintage.org/
Blinkenlights Archeological Institute
http://www.blinkenlights.com/
Home Computer Museum
http://www.homecomputermuseum.com/
Jim Willing's Computer Garage
http://www.computergarage.com/
Computer History Association of California
http://www.chac.org/
Uncle Roger's Classic Computers
http://www.sinasohn.com/clascomp/
It's not the radio stations' copyrights, they're only the licensees. The copyrights belong to the artists (and/or ASCAP). If I'm not mistaken, ASCAP's job is (supposedly) to protect the rights of its members.
Of course, it sounds like ASCAP is more interested in protecting its revenue streams than its members rights.
Copyright ownership gives you control of how and whom your intellectual property can be used. Generally, this means that if you write a cool song or paint a spiffy picture, Microsoft can't just come along and use it in their ads.
If you want, you can let anyone who wants to use your IP any way they want, or you can pick specific entities that can use it. You can even say "I'll let you use this, but you have to pay me X dollars." (You can also say "I'll let you use this, but your entire board of directors has to take a mud bath with me, buck naked" but I doubt they'll go for it.)
If they go ahead and use it anyway, or use it without asking, that's a copyright violation.
ASCAP is claiming that because the content was framed with TravelFinder's name (and advertising) rather than the original licensee, then TravelFinder was not just pointing and saying "you can find a spiffy song over here," but saying instead, "Here, listen to this spiffy song we've got for you."
The first requires no licensing; the latter does. (According to ASCAP)
Whether there is or isn't a copyright violation is still up in the air. ASCAP is claiming there is.
And how do you come to this amazing conclusion?
No. What ASCAP is saying is that you cannot put a link on your page directly to those sample clips and pass them off as if they were your own. To do so, you would need to pay ASCAP licensing fees for distributing their member's music. As you said, "There are a lot of issues with framing other people's content, especially if you put ads in those border frames." ASCAP is claiming that one of those issues is that you need to pay licensing fees for those other people's (ASCAP members) content.
Actually, I believe there was a case wherein the Wall Street Journal sued another site which was posting WSJ stories within their frameset as if they were the other site's original work.
This, by the way, is what ASCAP is claiming is happening here. But you don't care about that, or you would have spent a smidgeon of time reading the actual article, instead of a whole lot of time shooting your mouth off.
As for ASCAP's guidelines for linking to their own site, most of them are just nice wordings of existing laws (copyright and others). btw, when they say false, they're talking factually false, not your inane opinions.
The last two, dealing with infringing and offensive sites, are probably not legally enforceable, but entirely understandable. What they're saying is that they would prefer you didn't say something like "these songs stolen from ASCAP members!" on your warez site, or similarly link from a porno site.
Well, to answer what ASCAP does, here's a quote from their web page (I wasn't entirely sure before, though I had sort of a vague idea):
So what does that mean? Well, let's say you're a guy with a guitar, and you really want to be a rock star. You write some songs, dump 'em to CD, and give some to your friends. Maybe you even play a couple of gigs at the local pub.
Okay, so now your parents (who wanted you to be a doctor or a lawyer) say that it's time you moved out and got your own place (after all, you are in your mid-20's.)
So you and a couple of buds get this really rocking place downtown. You're playing and having a great time, until the landlord asks for the rent. So now you have to get a job, and you don't have much time for playing.
But you still listen to the radio at work, right? Well, one day, you hear your song being played on the radio! Cool! Now you can quit your job and get that limo with the hot tub in the back. Only, the radio station isn't paying you anything.
They don't have to, because they're a big corporation, and you're just a nobody making minimum wage. They've got lots of lawyers, you don't even know any lawyers.
Then a record label hears it, and gets one of their house musicians (or some soap opera star) to sing it and they have a huge hit on their hands. And they pay you nothing. Their lawyers say they wrote it, and they'll happily go to court over it.
So you wander the streets telling people that you wrote that hit song, but the record company stole it, and they just shake their heads and cross the street. Your parents call once a week to remind you how they said you should become a lawyer...
ASCAP purports to be a grouping of composers, authors, and publishers that has banded together to prevent this sort of thing happening.
Perhaps they've gotten too big for their britches, and perhaps they're not doing a good job, but to say they offer no benefit is ludicrous and inane.
I suspect you would if you made your living off the stolen site. Or, perhaps you're already independantly wealthy, and you wouldn't.
Only if the radio automatically replaced the call letters of the radio station with, for example, "Panasonic".
It's more like if someone set up a search engine with their logo, their name, their advertisers, but all the form did was pass stuff to AltaVista or Google, collect the results, and display them with, again, their logo, their name, and their advertisers.
Or, look at it this way. Suppose you developed a cool on-line game. You buy some servers, get a T-1, line up some advertising to pay for it all. All is going well. Until you notice your T-1 is jam-packed but no one's seeing your ads.
Turns out, someone else put up a front end page to your game, with their own ads. You did all the development, bought the server, and are paying for the bandwidth, but they're getting the profits. They're using your resources for their own personal gain.
It's the same as SPAM.
Only, with IP theft thrown in.
This is a sore point for me, as I know of at least one site that does this with one of my sites, and it's going to start happening a lot. Unless you can afford to pay lawyers all the time, there's not a lot you can do about it.
Of course, as I said before, I'm not sure ASCAP is the one that should be getting their panties in a bunch about it. They're just greedy.
I don't think they're ignoring the fact that it's coming from somewhere else -- I think they're claiming it's not obvious it's coming from somewhere else, and therefore, TravelFinder is essentially repackaging the content as their own.
Mind you, I don't necessarily agree that ASCAP is the entity that should be getting their panties in a bunch, but I understand their viewpoint.
No, web rings (and what we mean by "links") only point you to content elsewhere -- not provide that content for you.
To limit that, of course, would be amazingly stupid on ASCAP's part, and I don't think they're stupid.
And "wear" do you mount the GPS antenna? 8^)
ASCAP is claiming that TravelFinder was displaying the broadcast within its frameset, giving the impression that the broadcast originated from TravelFinder.
Imagine if you made, say, a really spiffy Got Milk parody featuring Yoda, and someone else displayed it on their site, within a frame, so that although the image was coming from your site, it looked like it was their's. You'd be pissed, right?
To a lesser extent, this is what ASCAP is claiming. I suspect their position is that if you are going to broadcast "their" music, you have to pay the licensing fees, whether you got it as a free promo CD, from the local record store, or as an internet feed from another site.
Mind you, I'm not saying ASCAP is entirely correct, but it doesn't sound like it's a simple case of "you put a link to my site on your page, so you owe me."
First off, It seems unlikely to me that Harvard, with a reputation of being an excellent law school, would destroy evidence if some sort of wrong-doing had been done. They really ought to know better.
But, if they did wipe the site completely, Ken has nothing to worry about in terms of lawsuits (without evidence, it's all he-said-she-said), disciplinary action from Harvard (he's not a student), or loss of his job (no reason, because there's no evidence).
Furthermore, I suspect he would have a good case against Harvard for destruction of his site, including the loss of his schoolwork. (Can you say Harvard is a cracker?) If I were on a jury, I'd certainly have Harvard pay him enough so he wouldn't have to worry about his schooling being screwed up.
If, however, Harvard does have a copy, then there is a possibility of a lawsuit happening. In which case, Ken Williams has really nothing to worry about from Harvard claiming he cracked their systems -- even the world's worst lawyer could get a judge/jury to see that 400K hits could not go unnoticed. If Harvard knew about it, they must have approved of it.
That would leave only the alledgedly libelous material. Which, if it was as John Vranesevich claims, than KW deserves whatever he gets. If it is not, than JV should be rightly counter-sued.
My guess is that Harvard pulled the server and is preventing KW access until they can determine what's what. If there really was libellous material, they certainly don't want KW to go and erase it.
Wait and see is all we can do.
Except that Apple Corp. has absolutely nothing to do with this. The computers are all being sold by private individuals. (Jef Raskin and (possibly) Computer Jones.)
If it were Apple, a smarter move would have been to donate them. (Which they have done in the past.)
I also don't care for the spamming LaSalle did to computer collectors to promote this. (I certainly didn't need their multi-meg attachments.)
But hey, there's not a lot I wouldn't do for $40k.
Um, no. In the short term, perhaps CRT manufacturers will lower prices to keep people buying CRT's, but at some point in the near future the switch will be made -- LCD's will become the norm and the CRT the oddity. At that time, CRT prices will go up as sales dwindle and factories are converted.
10gig IDE hard drives are easily had for a hundred bucks, but if you needed a new Widespread LCD acceptance will only serve to increase the price of CRT's. Sorry.
Once the price of LCD's really start to fall, there will, of course, be a glut of used monitors on the market -- if you don't mind that purpley-look.
Personally, I look forward to the death of the last vacuum tube!
That's one way to do it, but it's a fair bit of work, and never foolproof.
The other option is to make sure you never say/write/transmit anything that you wouldn't want the rest of the world to hear/read/etc.
Perhaps as difficult for some people as the former, but certainly a viable option.
Personally, I have nothing to hide.
It looks just like the Monorail. Kinda neat, but no biggie.
Personally, I have a 17" monitor, MS Natural Keyboard, and a Logitech Trackman Marble hooked up to four -- yes four -- computers: My Linux box (what I'm using to write this), My MS-DOS/Win3.11 laptop (my main computer), My voicemail system, and my linux-based network gateway. One of these days I'll get around to hooking up a Win95 box to play with.
I'm using a OmniView switch box, of course. With something like the NEC, you need to make room for multiple keyboards, screens, mice, etc. to use multiple computers.
I see these as handy in places like the foyer to leave messages to housemates/spouses/kids, etc, or other household/general business tasks.
Actually, the former does not necessarily imply the latter. There is a never-ending debate about the value of museums. On the one hand, they are excellent for making artifacts accessible to the general public.
On the other hand, however, they are often under-funded and lacking adequate space. It is not unusual to find incredibly important items locked in a back room, or even worse -- left out in a storage yard, due to lack of display space and lack of knowledge on the part of the curators.
As an alternative, private collectors do it because they care about the items personally. They spend their own money to rescue artifacts and restore them lovingly.
Of course, none of these are always the case, but my own personal feeling is that I'd rather see something like this go to a collector who knows what they are doing rather than a museum that will stick it in a plexiglass box so the public can watch it decay.
I know that when I die, my collection will go to another collector rather than a museum.
Well, if you have to donate it, I would recommend the Vintage Technology Cooperative (which puts on the Vintage Computer Festival mentioned in the article.)
Of course, it's a moot point as it belongs to a private citizen who is free to do with it what he wants. But you're welcome to bid on it, purchase it, and donate it yourself.
Apple isn't selling it. Someone else is.
Rumor has it that it's a guy named Computer Jones, but I don't know for sure. CJ is, shall we say, a little not-quite-mainstream.
I have heard of confirmed sales in the $10K area, and there was apparently an auction some time ago where one sold for something like $30K (I seem to remember Woz being involved?)
This one will probably sell for $40K or more -- there are some very well financed collectors running around these days.
The one at Fry's in Sunnyvale, btw, belongs to the Computer History Association of California.
Shameless plug: Check out my collection as well -- I don't have an Apple I, but It's on my wanted list.
There are plenty more, but those should give you enough to get started, and each has lots of links to explore.
Meanwhile, I am an amateur musician. The cables running around my keyboards and synths look like anarchy itself. I don't play that much anymore. We have a friend living with us who has a babe of 10 months who just loves banging on things. She crawls around in her bare feet and likes watching leave it to beaver.
I'm afraid I have a bit of a beer belly, so I don't wear the bikini style swimsuits I did in high school. I guess that's what happens when you sit around compiling source code into binaries instead of throwing a long bomb on the football field. Oh well, I haven't hit bottom yet, while my wife is no blonde bombshell, she's pretty good looking.
My bud and I were chatting the other day about how he should get one of those bra things for the front of his cherry red corvette. Then his twin girls came out to show us pictures of the the baby chicks they had hatched at school.
I'm kinda glad I don't live in Oz -- I'd never be able to put out the San Francisco Free List.