[HPCC-Conf] Conference Report

[Tony Duell]

> I am sure Tony seeks the truth, and if he looks a
> little further he will indeed find it.  He could not

Since when do personal opinions (and that's what a lot of this is, 
particularly in relation to organising a conference) qualify as 'the truth'?

[...]

> materially and educationally?  Things happened
> at the Conference that went right past you, but they
> did not escape many who were there.  Some of these
> have already been discussed on this list.

Can I have some examples, please?

> Try to think more of an HP User Community on
> planet earth and you will discover something

I have been told that I am not, and never will be, a member of the 'HP 
community', so obviously I have little interest in it.

> beyond yourself, beyond HPCC, and beyond the
> UK.  It is a BIG world and we, most of those who
> attended the Conference are about a certain kind of
> technical person that just happens to have HP machines
> as a focus.  If you limit your thinking to the hardware
> you will completely miss the point.

I was under the impression that the point of such a conference was to 
exchange information on using, programming, repairing, modifying, etc, 
these HP calculators. Obviously I am mistaken. Perhaps somebody could 
tell me the real reason for the conference. It's a pity, though, I 
wasn't told before I registered.

> 
> Keep on with the discussion and get the input from
> others as being expressed here and you will
> get the picture.  I observed a much greater sense of
> differences among European Countries on this, my
> fifth trip.  Even with the EU there strong differences.
> I suppose that we - Americans - strive to reduce those
> differences, with great pain and difficulty, so that society
> can get on with a good life for everyone.

The only way most Americans seem to want to remove such differences is by 
making the rest of the world do things their way.... But I digress.

[...]

> is to tally two things.  List all those things you have gained from
> being a member of the group, and then list all those things you have
> given to the group.  Which list is longer?  If the former is longer
> you are a taker, if the latter is longer you are a giver.

Following that criterion, I think _everyone_ ends up a taker. The point 
being that information does not decrease by being shared (if anything it 
increases).

If you take one of my physical HP9100 machines, then I can no longer use 
it. You've gained, I've lost. But if you take the instructions on how to 
diagnose an HP9100 CPU fault, that you've gained but I have not lost. I 
can still repair the machines. So can you.

Consider a small user group of 10 people. Each writes an article for the 
journal. Therefore each person gives one item, and takes 9 items. 
Everyone, by your definition, is a taker. 

Yes, I'll admit I've 'taken' stuff from HPCC over the years. I obtained a 
full set of club swapdisks, for example. And I gave back the source code 
of linus programs to handle LIF disks/images of same. I got some programs 
I wanted (that was the original intention of the swapdisks after all), I 
gave back some information about how the disks are structured.

I've extracted a lot of information from the HPCC library. I've also 
spent the time to catalogue that library, to sort out some of the piles 
of handwritten/phootcopied pages, to back up the magnetic media, and so 
on, so that the library is more useful to other people. 

ANd I've been given bits of broken calculators over the years, Some of 
which I've got working, others I've used as spares. But I can assure you 
I never sold anything for financial gain. And if I discovered repair 
methods, etc, I certainly shared them with anyone that was interested.

Yes, OK, I'm a taker. I guess that means I should resign now. Suits me...


-tony