BYTE Magazine

[dudeslife]

Just a heads up. The Archive has started uploading issues. They seem to be only ones we already have though.

 

https://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Abyte-magazine&sort=-publicdate

[Jim02762]

Nice! I actually meant to check earlier this week to see if they'd take 'em.

 

They have some real good stuff there, including other magazines. And I like their reader having the pages side-by-side.

[Jason Scott]

Hi, Jason Scott here.

 

I'm the one uploading to the archive. I have scripts that directly inject magazines by the truckload into the archives, as well as declaring collections and generally letting me add the issues in a pretty cohesive manner. I believe I've uploaded all currently-scanned issues, although I would be grateful to hear of either additional issues out there, as well as cases where I uploaded a known "bad" copy when a "good" copy is out there instead.

 

I've been adding thousands of digitized out-of-print computer magazines to archive.org (and terabytes of other things besides), and of the many scans, Thumpnugget's was and are one of the best. I took some issue way back when with him both slicing the magazines open (a la Google) and then throwing them away (which I don't know of anyone else doing). But absolutely, his scans are among some of the best that have been done for these sorts of projects.

 

So I'm up for anyone notifying me of other magazine sets out there, or if someone has taken up the project of scanning the rest of the magazines, but until then, kudos to Thumpnugget for his service. Hope he comes back!

[Keatah]

Most folks scanning the rags don't get the black levels just right. A lot of the scans have too much "saturation" in black and the darker colors.

[Jim02762]

I believe I've uploaded all currently-scanned issues, although I would be grateful to hear of either additional issues out there, as well as cases where I uploaded a known "bad" copy when a "good" copy is out there instead.

 

The ones that are currently being scanned and uploaded to ftp://helpedia.com/pub/archive/temp/Byte/Uploads%202012/ are for the most part replacements for "bad" ones. As of a few hours ago there are also two different scans of the never-before-scanned Jan. 1984 issue in the same directory.

 

Will Archive.org allow you to replace the bad scans with the new ones?

 

I took some issue way back when with him both slicing the magazines open (a la Google) and then throwing them away (which I don't know of anyone else doing).

 

I don't like the thought of cutting up the magazines either. But unfortunately that's usually the only way they're going to get scanned. They only other way I know of is by building a jig, setting up lighting, and using a really good digital camera and then doing special post-processing with software. That's going to be a bit too much for most people!

 

I have three 80 Micro's that my father didn't get to throw out decades ago. Two of them apparently haven't been scanned by anybody yet. I'm really not looking forward to removing the binding but really have no choice. But I will certainly keep the pages.

 

I'm also going to be scanning in the ~12 issues of CONNECT magazine too, not that anybody remembers it. Luckily they're just stapled.

 

So I'm up for anyone notifying me of other magazine sets out there, or if someone has taken up the project of scanning the rest of the magazines, but until then, kudos to Thumpnugget for his service. Hope he comes back!

 

Not just Thumpnugget. Others deserve kudos too, like tosteve and whoever is doing the current scanning.

[Jason Scott]

I am in charge of this collection (I work for Archive.org) and therefore can snap in replacements where they've been improved.

 

I agree, many more than Thumpnugget have worked - it just seems he toiled in solitary effort for a long time, and I was a critic who wants to clear I respected his efforts.

[exobuzz]

I am in charge of this collection (I work for Archive.org) and therefore can snap in replacements where they've been improved.

 

I agree, many more than Thumpnugget have worked - it just seems he toiled in solitary effort for a long time, and I was a critic who wants to clear I respected his efforts.

 

awesome job!

 

just wanted to mention to everyone I am still mirroing at a couple of locations including http://malus.exotica.org.uk/~buzz/byte/ but I might be missing some as it seems there have been uploads on the other site already mentioned. I grabbed some the other day. If someone could let me know if I'm missing stuff that would be great thanks.

[Jim02762]

I am in charge of this collection (I work for Archive.org) and therefore can snap in replacements where they've been improved.

 

Ya, that was a dumb question. Sorry. I knew your name sounded familiar. I know who you are now. Welcome to AtariAge!

 

Jim

(down the street in Plainville)

[dudeslife]

I am in charge of this collection (I work for Archive.org) and therefore can snap in replacements where they've been improved.

 

 

Jason, how goes the search for a run of Creative Computing magazine?

Edited September 25, 2012 by dudeslife

[Jason Scott]

Nobody has given Creative Computing the well-deserved scanning love that BYTE has gotten. A true gap.

[+wood_jl]

Creative Computing was the other side of the coin! I spent many hours in the Jr. High (er, "Middle School" is the new nomenclature) library reading Creative Computing. It was excellent, and its less-technical orientation made for easy layman reading, while still being extremely well-done. Between Creative Computing and BYTE, some damn good nerd reading. Had to read the Atari-specific mags to get much coverage on those machines, though.

[mariush]

See this link : http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/

 

All articles from Volume 9 - No 1 (Jan 1983) to Vol 11 (Nov 1985)

 

Not full magazines but at least it's something.

[dudeslife]

See this link : http://www.atarimaga...s.com/creative/

 

All articles from Volume 9 - No 1 (Jan 1983) to Vol 11 (Nov 1985)

 

Not full magazines but at least it's something.

 

That site is an abomination. Obviously the dude is sitting on the magazines but refuses to archive them in pdf because he is more interested in driving traffic to his lame site of hacked up text files.

[dudeslife]

I heard an interview with that atarimagazine site owner on one of the retro podcasts and if I remember correctly, he was not speaking kindly about Jason Scott, who has done more for preservation than any other individual I can think of. really strange....

Edited September 28, 2012 by dudeslife

[+Allan]

 

 

That site is an abomination. Obviously the dude is sitting on the magazines but refuses to archive them in pdf because he is more interested in driving traffic to his lame site of hacked up text files.

I'm not the sites owner but put in Hundreds of hours helping him scan and OCR and HTML many of the magazines on the site. To call the site an 'abomination' is ridiculous. It may not be in PDF format like some like but it is searchable which in the past was not an option for PDFs. If you don't like it, fine. But you don't have to insult the people who spent a lot of time and money to put this material on the internet.

 

Allan

 

[dudeslife]

I'm not the sites owner but put in Hundreds of hours helping him scan and OCR and HTML many of the magazines on the site. To call the site an 'abomination' is ridiculous. It may not be in PDF format like some like but it is searchable which in the past was not an option for PDFs. If you don't like it, fine. But you don't have to insult the people who spent a lot of time and money to put this material on the internet.

 

Allan

 

yes, my comments were a little harsh and not meant to be personal attack on the website's owner, just on the way he is doing things and his philosophy. But compared to other archival sites, my comments are accurate. The joy of browsing a magazine is totally taken away from a users on this website. it's cold and stale. and if time and money are being greatly sacrificed, let me suggest scanning to pdf files to remedy this. I am not going to go back and forth with you on this, I've said everything I wanted to say on the subject.

[+Allan]

 

 

yes, my comments were a little harsh and not meant to be personal attack on the website's owner, just on the way he is doing things and his philosophy. But compared to other archival sites, my comments are accurate. The joy of browsing a magazine is totally taken away from a users on this website. it's cold and stale. and if time and money are being greatly sacrificed, let me suggest scanning to pdf files to remedy this. I am not going to go back and forth with you on this, I've said everything I wanted to say on the subject.

 

When the site was started PDFs were basically just picture files. You couldn't search them for a topic or some key word.(unless they were originally created from text files). So the point of turning them into HTML files was to be able to search them. Things are obviously different now with PDFs so it would make more sense to use them. In fact some of the later stuff scanned is in pdf format.

 

Allan

Edited September 29, 2012 by Allan

[dudeslife]

When the site was started PDFs were basically just picture files. You couldn't search them for a topic or some key word.(unless they were originally created from text files). So the point of turning them into HTML files was to be able to search them. Things are obviously different now with PDFs so it would make more sense to use them. In fact some of the later stuff scanned is in pdf format.

 

Allan

 

Yes I understand he started that site 15 years ago before pdfs were practical (but that was then, this is now). and maybe for some type of research, it is more than functional. but I doubt many people go there to "search for an article". It is not a site for browsing or experiencing the magazines as they were meant to be experienced. and what happens one day when the site goes away? what if something happened and he just decided to close it down? his tight leash on the "archives" ensure that no one can enjoy the articles without an internet connection (unless they do a lot of copy and pasting). When I sound peevish about that site, I am thinking specifically of the Creative Computing magazines. It is a shame that they are not archived as they should be, in glorious page turning pdf format.

 

Since I have become interested in the archiving world, the two biggest crimes I have witnessed were the lack of Incider and Creative Computing pdf archives. Thankfully, the Incider problem has been nearly solved. Kids today have a right to view the magazines as they were intended, not as hacked up text files.

[+Allan]

 

 

Yes I understand he started that site 15 years ago before pdfs were practical (but that was then, this is now). and maybe for some type of research, it is more than functional. but I doubt many people go there to "search for an article". It is not a site for browsing or experiencing the magazines as they were meant to be experienced. and what happens one day when the site goes away? what if something happened and he just decided to close it down? his tight leash on the "archives" ensure that no one can enjoy the articles without an internet connection (unless they do a lot of copy and pasting). When I sound peevish about that site, I am thinking specifically of the Creative Computing magazines. It is a shame that they are not archived as they should be, in glorious page turning pdf format.

 

Since I have become interested in the archiving world, the two biggest crimes I have witnessed were the lack of Incider and Creative Computing pdf archives. Thankfully, the Incider problem has been nearly solved. Kids today have a right to view the magazines as they were intended, not as hacked up text files.

If anyone is worried about the site going away just archive the parts that you want. And actually the site is hosted by Atariage anyways. As far as PDFing everything, that would be up to Kevin but that would be a lot of work. And putting up Incider is probably not going to happen because everything Kevin has put up he has gotten permission for by the original publishers and authors and from what I heard from the owners/publishers of Incider was that they did not want Incider put on the Web. (I could be mistaken about that though.)

 

Allan

[dudeslife]

As far as PDFing everything, that would be up to Kevin but that would be a lot of work.

 

if he did not destroy the magazines, he should at least let someone else pdf them if its too much work for him. (again I am speaking of Creative Computing only)

 

And putting up Incider is probably not going to happen because everything Kevin has put up he has gotten permission for by the original publishers and authors and from what I heard from the owners/publishers of Incider was that they did not want Incider put on the Web. (I could be mistaken about that though.)

 

If this is true, then this is why Jason Scott's philosophy is better. At least people will be able to read them and archive them for the future while lawyers and corporate bureaucrats are trying to pull their heads out of their asses.. Luckily, some people have been working diligently to archive Incider in pdf format and the entire run of the magazine is almost completed. Incider is really a nice read on an iPad. (as is Byte, Compute!, etc). That website, not so much, which is my point. As far as publishers go, the prevention of any book or magazine from being read by future generations is sad. Luckily they are being defeated on nearly every front.

Edited September 29, 2012 by dudeslife

[Jason Scott]

I heard an interview with that atarimagazine site owner on one of the retro podcasts and if I remember correctly, he was not speaking kindly about Jason Scott, who has done more for preservation than any other individual I can think of. really strange....

 

Well, the head of Atari Magazines.com is Kevin Savetz, who I had the pleasure of going to dinner with the last time he visited NY, and who hung out with me when I was in Portland last year for an event, so I don't know if he's gone on the record of not liking me, and if he has, it was some significant time ago and maybe we settled things. Because right now, I consider Kevin an awesome buddy. We were supposed to see each other the weekend of the XOXO Festival in Portland, but that thing had events running from dawn to midnight and it ate my time up. Maybe it was someone else?

[Savetz]

Hi gang — Kevin Savetz of AtariMagazines.com here.

 

First of all, Jason Scott is my friend and I have no argument with him. I don't recall ever having a beef with him, but if I did I'm over it. I have nothing but praise and sparkly unicorns for Jason, and he for me (at least in my mind.)

 

Without going back and listening to that podcast — I think it was Retrogaming Roundiup? — I believe I said that Jason and I have a very different approach to archiving things: I've been all about getting permission, and putting things up as searchable text; and he's about getting as much as possible online as quickly as possible, to hell with getting permission. I certainly didn't say his way is wrong. I really admire the way he's doing things — he's ensured that SO MUCH great computer history is saved for posterity.

 

Now, a couple of other things — YES! Creative Computing Magazine needs to be online, with full-page scans at archive.org. And yes, I have a (probably? Pretty much?) complete set of the issues. I am loathe to cut them up to feed them to the scanner. I mean, I could — and we could have the whole set of magazines online as PDFs in a couple of weeks. Kill a few magazines to save the magazines. But when it comes down to actually destroying the magazines, I haven't been able to do it. So I bought a non-destructive book scanner from some guy at diybookscanner.org for a lot of money — and it's been nothing but problems, I haven't been able to get it to work. So I've been stuck.

 

As for AtariMagazines.com vs. PDFs — when I started the site, PDFs were somewhere on the meter between impractical and useless. So we started scanning, OCRing, and HTMLizing the

issues. That's WAY more work than just scanning to PDFs. It does have some benefits — when people who don't know about my site or archive.org just do a search on Google, articles as text are way more likely to come up in their search results than an article inside a PDF. So they're more likely to find the info the want when it's text.

 

There are advantages to reading the magazines as they were originally presented — but there are also advantages to the text/HTML treatment. My philosophy when the site launched was that it was more important to preserve the information than be fetishistic about the original presentation of that information. Today, we can have both.

 

Yes — times have changed, and maybe AtariMagazines.com should stop doing the extra work of making HTML versions of the articles. It's something to consider.

 

> "what if something happened and he just decided to close it down?"

 

That's a conversation you could have about almost any web site (hello ArchiveTeam) but come on, I started the web site in 1996 and am still maintaining it, it doesn't seem like I'm in this for the short term, does it?

 

> his tight leash on the "archives" ensure that no one can enjoy the articles without an internet connection

 

Because the permission I have generally asked for is to put the material online on the web. If one doesn't bother getting permission, one doesn't have those restrictions.

 

Funny — I talk about some of these very issues in my book which will be out by the end of the month. ("Terrible Nerd" coming to an amazon.com near you.)

 

> As far as publishers go, the prevention of any book or magazine from being read by future generations is sad. Luckily they are being defeated on nearly every front.

 

Agreed.

 

--Kevin

[Keatah]

Reasons this, excuses that, blahh blahh bla... I say just make it happen. It can't get any simpler.

Edited October 5, 2012 by Keatah

[Keatah]

No one on the outside really cares about the infighting in a project. And regarding publishers, well let them. If they want to hinder the availability of material then it just dies out and loses importance, and you're (the publisher) left holding a bag of shit.

[Keatah]

I really have no idea why rags are made in HTML. Perhaps it was the way to do back in the day, but not now. I really don't bother with anything I cannot download and read at my leisure on the device of my choice at the time of my choice. HTML'ing a book is blasphemy. Eventually they make their way to an open format (PDF in this instance) viewable in the way people want.