I don't think you appreciate the magnitudes involved. Picture the biggest forest fire you've ever heard of. Here's a dime store squirt gun and a canteen. Go put it out. Good luck, we're all pulling for you.

Now realize that it's nowhere near that easy.

A better approach is to make the copyright holder a legal steward of the work until it enters the public domain. That is, they have a legal duty to maintain it in the best possible form and make sure it gets handed off to interested parties when it enters the public domain. Failure to do so is a breech of the contract resulting in handing all profits from the work during copyright to the public (that is, a massive fine).

If the cost of maintaining the work exceeds the value, they may choose to terminate the copyright early, but must give sufficient public notice.

Would you provide it just run full speed until it burns out?

Actually, it wasn't my statement, but I did defend it as not too far from true.

Because many over 60 have very little experience with computers, you have more knowledge to backfill in order to teach them about computers (starting with de-mystifying the magic box). Again, not a question of intelligence or educability, just a matter of experience.

That will be true for many (more often than not), but clearly is far from universally true.

I have little doubt most of those things are magic to most people, but through using them for decades, they have learned to deal with them from a black box perspective. The 60 somethings who have recently found a good enough reason to bother with a computer will get there too.

I can see that, but that group was a small minority of people who are now 60+ years old. It's enough that one shouldn't assume a 60+ year old is a computer novice, but not enough to invalidate the claim that most 60+ year olds are less knowledgeable of computers.

Actually, growing up in the cold war did the opposite for me. I see our government doing more and more of the things that made "the Russians" the bad guys. I guess I'm "doublethink impaired".

Based on the last few years, I'd have to say neither one. They seem more interested in listening to the demographic that has millions to billions of dollars under their control.

With cancer, even the very expensive and carefully researched drugs can't guarantee a cure. A lot of people die of cancer while recieving the best treatments known to medicine. That doesn't mean they are worthless.

However, shame on anyone convincing cancer patients to forgo potentially curative medicine in favor of some unproven home remedy.

AHH, I see the confusion. I *DID* say that people actually working in the field were the exception. I'm not speaking of them. I'm speaking of "muggles". Doctors, nurses, mechanics, engineers, lawyers, secretaries, etc. People not in the "DP" department.

I was still in Elementary school in the '70s. I knew exactly one family that had a computer and it was a TRS-80. Mostly because the dad was an electronics engineer. My dad used a computer at work (civil engineer) but really didn't know how it worked beyond the programs he used. He also had a scientific calculator in the early '70s. A true rarity at a time when even a 4-banger cost $50 (and that was real money then).

At that time, balancing the check book was generally done un-aided with pencil and paper math. At most, a simple calculator might be involved. Why would anyone in that time feel that they NEEDed a computer to balance the check book? Especially given how much it cost. My friend's dad didn't evenm use their TRS-80 to balance the checkbook, it was too cumbersome for that.

My next-door neighbor was a programmer on a mainframe (COBOL IIRC) but didn't have a computer at home. I imagine he is now one of those 60+ who does have a clue about computers.

My contact with computers beyond the TRS-80 was dialing into the school system's mainframe with a Honeywell terminal as part of a summer program for gifted students. Very occasionally, we used punch cards.

By the '80s when I was in high school, we started getting C64s when the price came down but our parents weren't even vaguely interested in them and had no idea how they worked. I would guess perhaps 10% of the students used and understood computers. Another 20-30% saw them as advanced game consoles.

By the late '80s I had an XT clone with the v20 upgrade. I was building and repairing PCs. The customers were definitly using them by rote and had no idea how they actually worked.

Kinda like those people taking their statins like clockwork in spite of no proof that they do any good whatsoever. And all those people avoiding salt. And the people eating the trans-fat laden margarine because the fats in butter are harmful. How about those people alternately eating and not eating eggs because they are either good for you or lethal in any amount?

When "science" and "medicine" give such crappy advice, is it any wonder people start listening to woo from other sources too?

More to the point, frankly W wanted to be a war president like his daddy and he found a poor excuse to make it happen.

What did an adult in 1977 need a spreadsheet for at home? More to the point, what did they need it for badly enough to spend $1300 (in 1977 dollars) on?

I was there. I saw it. I helped them. It was certainly by rote. They understood the computer like they understood an instamatic camera. In the '70s, for the most part if there was a computer at work, it was a vt100 terminal connected to a mainframe or a mini. IT was still called "DP". In the '80s, the PC started to take hold.

Cough and cold tablets are a stimulant, but not amphetamines. Otherwise nobody would bother with the lithium and iodine, they'd just eat a whole pack of cold pills.

Adderall is actually amphetamine (not methamphetamine), so it is safer than meth but not as safe as cold pills. It's actually the stuff bikers were so in to in the '60s.

Nah, what does the employer care if after 5 years they develop an untreatable and disabling neurological disorder? They'll just burn 'em and churn 'em like always.