Dyspeptic archaeologists [was RE: Xerox Alto on ebay (not mine!)]

Rich Alderson RichA at vulcan.com
Mon Oct 18 15:41:33 CDT 2010


From: William Donzelli
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2010 7:43 PM

>> I don't have the numbers to argue it, but my impression was that the
>> library of Alexandria was a committment of a much higher percentage
>> of the available resources than any of those.  If so, then it was
>> "relatively" larger (although admittedly smaller absolute size).

> Most archaeologists seem to agree - the holdings of most of the
> ancient libraries was 95 percent crap - bad poetry and horrid prose.

On the other hand, the archaeologists are not qualified to judge the
value of the bad poetry and horrid prose to the linguists and and to
the historians, who almost certainly will not agree with each other,
either.

(Sometimes I wish I'd never gotten involved with computers and completed
 my doctorate in Indo-European linguistics instead.)


Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104

mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org

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