[Informatics] BookCrossing - Labels

Thu Dec 31 10:45:00 AEDT 2015

I'll spare you my old computer man stories, but Ken I liked the photo.
I thought it might be a drum storage device (but no) and it prompted
me to do a little hunting. I came across this potted history of
storage technology which I thought was worth sharing (one negative:
there is a pain-in-the-backside ad that pops up with each slide)
http://wwwextremetech.com/computing/90156-the-history-of-computer-storage-slideshow

 RegardsRobert T-A

----- Original Message -----
From: "Year 12 VCE Informatics Teachers' Mailing List" 
To:"Year 12 VCE Informatics Teachers' Mailing List" 
Cc:
Sent:Wed, 30 Dec 2015 22:29:47 +1100
Subject:Re: [Informatics] BookCrossing - Labels

Even older computer man story...
 Back in the day, I had a computer without hard drive. You could buy
"hard cards" for these computers, a plug in card with a 20MB (yes,
20MB) hard drive and controller. But these were ~$500 here. I visited
Hawaii on holiday, and noticed they were only $199 there. And then -
they had one in the Tandy store that had been opened, had no packing -
$99 - decision made.  
 So I bought it. 

 I wrapped it in a beach towel for protection and put it in the top of
my rucksack. 
 Coming back into Oz, I had a baggage search. I mentioned to the
security guy that the towel had a fragile device inside it - and when
he unrolled it and saw a board with a big metal block on one end, lots
of wires and various electronic components, he decided it was a bomb.
Buzzers went off, various people came out of offices and a long and
heated discussion started. (it didn't occur to anyone that if this WAS
a bomb, standing around the device wouldn't really be a clever thing
to do...but in those days we were thankfully innocent of actual plane
hijackings and bombings) 
 So - a couple of hours later, after they found someone in the airport
who did computer maintenance and verified it was a hard drive, I was
allowed to try to find an onward flight home. I think I got home
around midnight. 
 I noticed the other day that I still have files on my current backup
system that were created on that hard drive. Pity Lotus 123 and
Framework aren't still around to open them... 
 And even older - here's a 5MB IBM 350 hard drive from about 1955
being forklifted onto a plane. 
   And you tell that to t'young people these days, and they'll no'
believe you.."  

 kp 

On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 9:48 PM, Andrew Shortell  wrote:
you can also personally hand books over
 It is interesting that Mark never used “mark sense cards” It was
only ten years ago that I “disposed” of about 3 metres of them
(that is stacked) - that was just one program 
 Recently put a “spinning HDD” in the little display case at work
- spinning is so last decade  

 Danger: old computer man story :  When I purchased my first mac I
upgraded teh HDD before I even walked from teh shop for just $200 (a
lot of money in 1991 ) I went from 40 MB to 60 MB  yes Virginia I did
write MegaByte 
 A year later I upgraded teh RAM for another $200  from 128KB to
512KB  (yes KiloByte) 

 I am just so pleased we have moved on from those sort of prices and
sizes 

Andrew Shortell Educator CRC Melton 

  shortell at get2me.net [2] (This List) @acsbear8 (twitter)  

  On 30 Dec 2015, at 3:42 pm, ken price  wrote: 
 Indeed Mark - and now we are also seeing cloud data being "lost" as
teachers retire and/or die, without a record of where their data
lives.
 In some cases project or class data is in some secure cloud service,
but where and via what access process is not alway clear. 
 In relation to the original story - if you happen to use
bookcrossing, maybe try some of the less obvious ways to hand on your
books - leave them on a bus or train, at the beach, a mountain hut, a
youth hostel or homeless shelter.   
 kp    
On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 2:38 PM, Mark  wrote:
  It's ironic that while the printed book may well last longer than we
will, the metadata about it at bookcrossing.com [5] will probably be
gone within a year or two. 
 (Waves cane in air) 
 We're heading for a new digital dark age [6], I tell you!  A new
dark age! 
 Try reading a 3.5" floppy disk today... even if you can find a drive
to read it, the disk is likely to be full of magnetic or physical
errors.  Now try reading a 5.25" floppy: the motherboard port is
extinct and try finding a USB interface for the drive .. well, maybe
there is one exception [7]. Even a PATA hard disk is virtually
inaccessible in these days of SATA ports and drives.
 And what am I supposed to do with my roomful of punchcards from 1975
containing my database of songs by Captain and Tennille about Pet
Rocks?

 Where was I? (Puts down cane).  Nurse? I hope there's jelly for
dessert tonight. I like jelly. 
 Mark  
On 30 December 2015 at 14:07, Roland Gesthuizen  wrote:
  Here is something that you can do with that old book after you have
read it, before you toss them back into the wild for others to read
and enjoy. Label it with a unique BookCrossing ID to
track http://www.bookcrossing.com [9] via @arran4 
 Regards Roland 
  http://www.bookcrossing.com/labels [10] 
 BOOKCROSSING - LABELS 
 Labelling your books with a unique BookCrossing ID number (BCID) is
vital to successful BookCrossing. The BCID you get for each book you
register here will stay with the book for the rest of its natural
life, which of course is probably longer than you or any of us will
live. Anytime during that long, long future ahead of us that someone
reads the book, then comes to www.bookcrossing.com [11] and enters
that BCID, they will be able to see the complete journal history of
the book and make a new journal entry of their own. Cool, huh?   
 -- 

  Mark Kelly

  mark at vceit.com [12]
 http://vceit.com [13]    

-- 
-- 
Dr Ken Price MACS CP ACCE Professional Associate.
President, TASITE http://www.tasite.tas.edu.au [14]     

Links:
------
[1] mailto:shortell at get2me.net
[2] mailto:shortell at get2me.net
[3] mailto:kenjprice at gmail.com
[4] mailto:mark at vceit.com
[5] http://bookcrossing.com/
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_dark_age
[7] http://www.deviceside.com/fc5025.html
[8] mailto:rgesthuizen at gmail.com
[9] http://www.bookcrossing.com/
[10] http://www.bookcrossing.com/labels
[11] http://www.bookcrossing.com/
[12] mailto:mark at vceit.com
[13] http://vceit.com/
[14] http://www.tasite.tas.edu.au

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