Who collects these?
Intel pays $10,000 for old trade magazine — Here’s a great human interest story. Wife wants husband to throw out “crap!” “But honey! Someday it will be worth something!” “Bull! Throw it out!” He hides it instead. Now can you imagine the rest of their life together. “If I had listened to you when you told me to throw out the magazines..blah, blah, blah.” She is toast!
Silicon Valley, Apr 24: Chip giant Intel has paid a British engineer $10,000 for a 1965 copy of a trade magazine that featured the company’s co-founder Gordon Moore’s thoughts on how silicon technology would evolve.
David Clark, a 57-year-old Philips employee, had stored old copies of ‘electronics magazine’ underneath the floorboards of his home for decades.
“It was one of those publications that most people wouldn’t keep around after reading it. It was a trade publication,” said Manny Vera, an Intel spokesman.
In fact, Clark’s wife gave him a hard time over the years for hoarding the magazines, but he kept telling her one day they’d be worth a lot of money.
Intel posted a notice about its reward offer on e-Bay on April 11, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Moore’s law.
The issue contained an article by Moore that described how the number of components on integrated circuits was doubling every year.
Aside: Doubling every year?? I’d like to read this article.
Now I’d hope they’d post it as a PDF somewhere on their site… Ads and all.
I was looking at a 1965 womens magazine today. There is a zip code ad in it.
Here’s the ad copy.
ZIP CODE SPEEDS YOUR PARCELS
1. Packages are shipped by more direct route.
2. They are handled fewer times.
3. There is less chance of damage.
ZIP Codes keep postal costs down but only if you use them.
I guess people weren’t really adopting zip codes, thus the need for magazine ads. How does putting a number on something reduce the chance of damage? Honey, use the Zip Code or they will break it! Yes dear. I guess if you didn’t comply with the zip code and just wrote Los Angeles on the box, it could go from Portland via Omaha or something. The zip code means less people handling the parcel. Yea Charlie that one has a zip number on it, don’t touch it, work on that stack without zip codes. If these darn people just used the zip codes, these parcels would move themselves. Now we have zip plus 4, which I really can’t ever remember. The zip+4 was going to speed things up more, I guess. Then there is barcoding. All joking aside there’s a server for this stuff.
Given a valid U.S. postal address, this server attempts to rewrite the address in the proper format along with the ZIP+4 code. If it is successful, you can retrieve a Postscript or a GIF file of the address for printing, with a barcode! It generated a PDF file with the zip+4 and a barcode. Here’s a sample I made, with a fairly slow CPU on my slow system. http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/pdfaddr?right+81207443776331
I don’t know if the PDF link expires or will last into eternity. It’s easy to make another PDF.
Maybe my mail will be faster!
I guess I’ll start barcoding my mail.
http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/adserv.html
Note: We’ve updated the database! We’re now using the January 2002 database!!
Jim Dermitt, I don’t know what’s so hard to understand. Using a zip code allows a more direct route for mailing a package or letter. The more direct the route, the less it is handled, thus, the less chances there are to damage it.
As just one example, I used to live in a city with two “Lake Shore Drives.” I’m guessing that zip codes saved many mis-delivered letters and packages over the years.
Another great reason to hold on to the old playboy mags!
–>thank you John
I was just joking around Ima Fish. I’ll bet UPS could find you faster without a zip code and it would cost 20 percent less and you would get the package 40 percent faster with Teamster wages on top of that. Of course the old profit incentive would work for you, so they would really be trying to find you. I guess the zip code does make it sound zippy. You add the zip+4 and things really virtually speed up and barcoding makes the average postal parcel move at warp speed or government speed on Saturday. If they let UPS handle all the parcels, you could just eliminate a bunch of government jobs. The good guys could make more money with UPS and the Teamsters. Instead of privatizing social security, they could privatize parcel delivery next week and the public would have better service at the same time at less cost. They won’t do that, when they can setup some new thing to work at higher cost and lower performance. Maybe they can invent more government number systems for the public and tatoo a number in your arm in case you get lost along with your parcel package.
Try tracking the govt. for a change.
http://www.govtrack.us
Browse the underlying source data for this website http://www.govtrack.us/data/
More privacy=More security
Of course the digital idea is, face it you have no privacy. Who said that?
The only problem with Intel’s offer was that Libraries then had to hide their copies of the issue. Apparently a couple of issues did disappear though.
Yes, Pat, several library copies did vanish. Reminded me, for some reason, of the aluminum pennies that were never returned by our legislators. They were supposed to be samples but, sure enough, they “left the room” and later showed up in the rare coin market.
As for UPS and other carriers relieving the Post Office of parcel delivery, such a move would also reduce the price of a first class letter as revenue from that class is used to subsidize the Postal Service’s parcel delivery.