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Whole Earth Software Catalog (1984)
- bostonpete 6y agoWait, archive.org has scanned books?? I guess I'm only familiar with the archive's "Wayback Machine" -- I wasn't aware of their other offerings. This is interesting and has a pretty good interface for browsing. Even seems to use OCR to support search!
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoThey’ve archived software, too.
- bane 6y agoNot just archived, but made probably hundreds of thousands of pieces of software playable...in your browser.
- mannycalavera42 6y agoI've recently moved my support donations from wikipedia to archive.org after finding it out. Amazing content and the history of web deserves more
- SlickyPedia 6y agoWikipedia has more money than they can use; they still ask for donations even though they're more than relatively loaded with cash. I'd support the Internet Archive; as they're not really as over-grabby as "others." Every dollar you send to IA would buy them some hard drives or something; or whatever else they need. Internet Archive is the thing bros; Wikipedia is great and all but the Internet Archive is worth supporting with your dollars.
- throwaway5752 6y agoThat isn't true, and the Wikimedia Foundation has made it extremely easy to look up: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2018-2019/Final https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_... . They use all there money and it's well spent. Internet Archive is a great cause, too, and they are also well run https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943242767 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943... Support them both.
- kick 6y agoThey use all [their] money and it's well spent. False. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statisti... Revenue: $ 120,067,266 Expenses: $ 91,414,010
- bostonpete 6y agoIs it possible that some of that difference is due to amortization of hardware and other assets? I'm not a finance person, but I thought that those sorts of expenses show up incrementally on the books over the course of the amortization period even though they're typically paid for up front... (?)
- Out_of_Characte 6y ago"They use all the money" Yes, exactly why you should move your money to internet archive. Despite earning more than ever and providing relatively the same service wikipedia still 'use up' your money and ask for more in the form of an obtrusive banner. Therefore you can see that it's probaly not "well spent" see an agregate link below of wikipedia critics explaining and sourcing this. http://xahlee.info/w/do_not_donate_to_Wikipedia.html http://xahlee.info/w/do_not_donate_to_Wikipedia.html
- kick 6y agoI'm not pro-Wikimedia here (see other comment), but you're not being fair exactly; I'd go as far as to say your comment is wrong in everything except that the banner is obtrusive and that your funds would be better directed at the IA. The scale and scope of Wikimedia has been constantly expanding, and outside of a few terrible bets, it's generally been for the better. It hasn't been recklessly overspending and it's definitely not "providing relatively the same service."
- VerDeTerre 6y agoI've donated in the past, but with the recent copyright debacle, I'm less inclined to—not so much because I think they're clearly on the wrong side of the law (though I do believe so), but more because it seems like such an obvious and potentially catastrophic misjudgment. I'm fine with information activism, even if I'm not totally on board with the full program, but not at the expense of endangering the core mission. I don't think their actions will yield a valuable test case, so I'd prefer to see them instead work towards copyright reform in a more measured manner. I'll probably continue to support them because it's such an amazing resource and so many people are doing great work, but the leadership does not, at this time, have my confidence.
- badsectoracula 6y agoWhat recent copyright debacle?
- jmiskovic 6y agoClaiming they are library, they launched "National Emergency Library" initiative which made 1.4M works (of which some are copyrighted) freely available online worldwide. They have ended the program since. http://blog.archive.org/national-emergency-library/ http://blog.archive.org/national-emergency-library/
- AdmiralAsshat 6y agoI guess you haven't been following that whole legal saga during COVID where Archive was letting people check out digital library books?
- troughway 6y agoYou know how back in the 90s you used to get those CD-ROMs of games in cereal boxes you bought, or the AOL installation discs you'd use as cup coasters? Or just about any freeware CD-ROM from the 90s that you might have come across, period? Archive has all that, and more.
- zozbot234 6y agoArchive.org has so many scanned books that they're being sued by publishers calling it a pirate site. The EFF legal team is getting involved to defend the lawsuit.
- bane 6y agoWelcome to an entire universe of amazing material. The Internet Archive is a shining jewel of the Internet and the Wayback Machine may be one of the least interesting of their projects.
- sp332 6y agoThey have tens of millions of scanned books available, some millions of which they have scanned themselves. https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1244760075828428801 https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1244760075828428801 They have a huge amount of music available, some of which they worked with George Blood company to rip from 78 RPM shellac records. http://great78.archive.org/preservation/ http://great78.archive.org/preservation/
- walrus01 6y agoarchive.org has most historical Byte magazines scanned, which are great fun to read.
- simonblack 6y agoBooks, magazines, software, equipment manuals, even audio stuff. Don't go there. I won't be responsible for the months you spend in there, getting stuff like the August 1978 issue of BYTE, or Sophie Tucker singing songs from the 1920s.
- milquetoastaf 6y agoPerhaps also of interest to HN - the hypercard version of the Catalog! https://archive.org/details/the-electronic-whole-earth-catalog https://archive.org/details/the-electronic-whole-earth-catal...
- Stratoscope 6y agoRelated discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23754441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23754441
- hedora 6y agoIs it just my phone, or is this completely illegible? Much of the text is tiny dithered garbage, and pinch zooming just makes the document window turn black. I wish they would use plain HTML or a PDF.
- bane 6y agoIt is HTML. And the scanned documents on the Archive can be downloaded as PDF usually (among other formats).
- thereticent 6y agoIt's a bad black and white (or very few tone) scan. Really too bad that the titles of the items are unreadable!
- textfiles 6y agoIt's your phone. There's a zoom function. This is a very large book and a larger screen than a phone is needed.
- theseanz 6y agoPage 16, from a review of the "Disposable" Commodore 64: "It works great, but it's not destined to become a family heirloom"
- jandrese 6y agoNo computers of that era (or any era) are going to be heirlooms. The C64 shipped with a power supply that failed often and in a way that fried the computer. https://retrogamestart.com/answers/replace-c64-power-supply-voltage-failure-will-kill-your-c64 https://retrogamestart.com/answers/replace-c64-power-supply-...
- Theodores 6y agoAmazed to see AutoCad is in there along with 3D applications for visualisation. I did not think there was much in the way of 3D software available on PCs at such an early time. I thought workstations ruled the roost in those early days when it came to 3D.
- bane 6y agoThe late 70s and early 80s had lots of these kind of wonderful "collections of interesting stuff" in book form. I recall a number of books like this I used to check out of the library constantly that just seemed to ooze with a kind of energy of things and technology and people coming together in just such a way as to hint or suggest at a magnificent future humanity could emerge into. I wasn't the only one who checked these books out as they were all almost constantly checked out. One in particular was a clear offshoot I still remember today called "The Kid's Whole Future Catalog" by Paula Taylor...almost entirely forgotten today, but I managed to snag a copy off of ebay. I wish we could switch timelines in the future outlined in it.
- MiroF 6y agoStewart Brand (still alive) is the famous innovator of this sort of stuff, starting with the Whole Earth Catalog.
- rafaelturk 6y agoPage 34 Three Mile Island SCRAM simulator.. side-by-site with Flight Simulator
- monkeypizza 6y agoStewart Brand has done lots of good stuff. My favorite is the 6 part BBC series on "How Buildings Learn". It really opened my eyes to the importance of buildings. Very relevant to the frequent discussions here about zoning, design, etc. But also just an amazing, clear, well-informed amateur analysis of how the US has been doing in this field over the last 100 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2sIH0
- gav 6y agoThe book that inspired the series is also great. How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Buildings_Learn
- denimboy 6y agoCool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities by Kevin Kelly https://www.amazon.com/Cool-Tools-Possibilities-Kevin-Kelly/dp/1940689007 https://www.amazon.com/Cool-Tools-Possibilities-Kevin-Kelly/... is a worthy successor to Whole Earth Catalog in both content and spirit.
- denimboy 6y agoWe lost something when the catalog was overtaken by the search engine. With a catalog you could aimlessly browse and passively learn a slice of what was possible and available in some space. Of course a catalog is edited or curated which makes it biased but maybe more human editorial direction isn't such a bad thing in our current world of algorithmic optimized, SEO, echo chamber, click-bait choices. Browse-ability allows non-focesed search and informs choices that are made at a later time from passive data gathering.
- majormajor 6y agoSearch engines aren't exactly "un-biased," they're just biased in more obtuse and often-unintentional ways. The entire field of SEO exists to make it biased in your favor. (That's not to say SEO goes away in a catalog world - it just starts looking like the old-fashioned human marketing still used for other channels that it currently sits alongside.) Influencers sit in a curious place between the two worlds. An influencer is basically an independent (but paid and buy-able) "micro-catalog" maintainer who is themselves exposed through an algorithmic platform.
- theamk 6y agoWe still have the catalogs which you can aimlessly browse, but they are called differently: forums, reddit, HN
- bordercases 6y agoOne thing that I find absolutely bonkers, is that the Whole Earth Catalogue website, http://www.wholeearth.com http://www.wholeearth.com is broken and nothing has been done to fix it.