I'm guessing 40 years from now nobody will care about COBOL software from the 1970s but people will still want to play games from the 1980s.

Again: toys. All you care about is toys, it seems. And you're probably wrong. People who play games from the 1980s are a minority, like people who have a rec-room in the basement decorated in the style of the 1950's. They don't keep hardly anything actually from the 50's, just the 'best' stuff that people remember after culling almost everything out.

The only people who will care about COBOL are people concerned with actual historical records. Which isn't nostalgia.

You would probably have trouble with EBCDIC encoded stuff. Which is definitely NOT exotic, it was the mainstream in a large segment of computing 30 years ago. Of course you excluded 'Mainframes' which makes things so easy: there wasn't a hell of a lot else 30 years ago. Everything CP/M that was ever coded would probably fit on one DVD-R.

Last week I made a fresh copy of my 'archive' of everything computer related from my 20's. I copied everything off the 5 DVD-R disks that I burned in the early 00's onto a USB hard drive.

What was on the 5 DVD-Rs was what I copied then off about 30 CDR disks.

What was on the earliest few of the CDR disks was what I had copied there off DC2120 tape cartridges.

There is even one of the DVDs arranged with folders called 'CD4, CD4, CD6' and some of the CD folders have subfolders with names like 'Tape7, Tape8, Tape8.;

I might still have the original CDs in a cakebox somewhere, the DS2120 tapes are long gone.

I still have all the Windows 1.0 apps that I downloaded off BBSes back in the day. I still have every version of PC-DOS. I still have Microsoft Word 5.0 and all the Borland programming languages and all that stuff stored away. Linux install sets with 0.99.x kernel versions. And all my personal files, email, etc.

He is probably comparing a LD in a stainless steel shuttle or something like that, to a DVD in a jewel box.

I remember our Mayor presided over the opening of a 25 year old time capsule put there by the local schools. Inside was a lazer disc. When he asked to view the contents of it, nobody could find a device to play it. Vint is right. And its not just a DRM thing, its a lack of standards thing too.

In the case of the time capsule you describe, it was a dork thing, not a lack of standards thing.

Whomever put the laser disk in the time capsule thought they were being all futuristic and stuff. They should have put a cassette in the capsule, or a vinyl LP. Or a message on fricking punched paper tape. Those were all common recognized standards 25 years ago. A Laser Disk was a 'woo-woo' futuristic bullshit thing. It didn't represent what things were like 25 years ago, it was just someone being stupid and buying hype about what would exist in the future.

Let's not be apples-oranges.

Are there more charging points than gas pumps? And how long does a vehicle have to stay docked at said charging point, compared to time at a gas pump?

It's silly for electric vehicle advocates to put out disinformation. Don't they claim that's what the other side does?

Trotskyism/GNAA spam... it's all the same crap.

Buy a copy of the fucking Militant! Please!

Apple is offering crazy money to get folks to jump the other way, but not having anywhere near that kind of success.

Why would any tech person want to go to a marketing-department-run shithole like Apple?

I thought GM was killing Holden off this year or next. And throwing a 'bone' to the Holden dealers by allowing them to sell Corvettes in Oz.

Are you all excited and stuff? I've hated GM since they killed Saturn.

If you cant drive and focus on driving simply because they key pops out of the ignition, well you got bigger problems in life anyway

I think you meant to type 'the engine kills and power steering stops working. And the airbags become disabled.'

Obviously, my Kindle has a decryption tool. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to read the books on it.

So obviously only SOME decryption tools are outlawed.

That's something we can chip away at.

This is a VESA standards deal. Apple will shun it.

They seek to have their proprietary stuff adopted as 'standards' that they own.

when profits drop to reasonable levels for music and movies, they'll get made / created by people with a love for the art

So everybody is going to sing? Instead of just listening to recordings of a few people singing?

Why does anything at all have to change for that to happen?

So what are you going to do with your soap box?

I remember, before the Bruce Perens incident, when slashdot ID numbers were hidden.

It's sort of distasteful how it's become the opposite of what it was back then, something to show off about.

No, this isn't my first account, obviously. There are accounts lost to the ether in my past. Probably that's the case for a lot of other people here.

BTW, "Mae Ling Mak, Naked and Petrified", thought you're probably to young to remember. Before the newbs changed it to Natalie Portman (did Miss Mak sue or something?)