Jason Scott

If you want to translate (well, transcode really) from existing graphics to ASCII art, your best bet is aalib [1,2]. I'm unsure if curses/ncurses [3] is suitable for game work, but it's another thing you might want to look at. If she has an interest in the creativity of character based art, it would be best to talk to Jason Scott [4] but realize some of the archived art scene text might be considered unsuitable for a 13 year old (even though I'm sure some of it was created by 13 year olds). Also, Jason would be a good person to ask about how character based graphics were done in old games. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAlib [2] http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/aalib/ [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ncurses [4] http://ascii.textfiles.com/ EDIT: It also might be fun to show her Star Wars in ASCII animation telnet://towel.blinkenlights.nl

From Jason - https://ascii.textfiles.com/ > The work was always open licensed and it can be downloaded very easily from a variety of places.

submission is a follow-up to this original post: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5587 prior discussion of the original: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40005150

http://ascii.textfiles.com/ Gosh, why would anybody bother archiving Yahoo answers, Angelfire, Geocities, Tumblr, Myspace, Friendster, old BBSes, old Apple II and C64 and PC floppies, Usenet, forums... what value does any of that have?

I always loved this story of his: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1127 For some reason, the original is gone. That's his sequel.

Jason Scott is a treasure. People will be thanking him for his preservation efforts for millennia. If you're not familiar with him and his work, check out his website (http://textfiles.com) and the excellent _Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It_ podcast (http://ascii.textfiles.com/podcast). Per the quote in the article, "people who are moved by them should consider donating to a worthy cause of their choice", if anyone is moved by these photos and doesn't know where to make a donation, you might consider supporting Jason's work on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/textfiles/posts) or making a donation to The Internet Archive (https://archive.org/), where he works. (I'm not affiliated with Jason or The Internet Archive in any way, but I am (as you can probably tell) a big fan of both.)

You see it happening already, people are finding e.g. old tape drives from MOS Technology (http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5256) which could contain valuable information about the design of some older processors and such, but they're unreadable and/or rotted. Same for older films, which are finally getting painstakingly restored and digitized. TL;DR if you're making something, and it turns into something great, make sure your older stuff, the stuff you did to work towards it, is archived somehow.

Jason's follow up post to this: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4352

I don't know who Brewster Kahle is, and I don't know who is doing what at the LoC, but I do know that however it shakes up, someone needs to get Jason Scott[1][2] onboard and give him the resources he needs to keep doing what he does at ever-increasing scale. [1] http://ascii.textfiles.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Scott Edit: Oh, I guess BK is an IA person, so he knows Jason Scott very well :)

What an amazing effort. In case someone local wants to join in: The warehouse is located in Finksburg, MD, about 30 miles northwest of Baltimore. [taken from the original post of the issue: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4683]

From a previous post: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4695 > Hey, go ask Google. I think people don’t understand what Google is and how much it particularly cares about doing “The Right Thing” (not much), and the next person to mention the Linear Book Scanner (a prototype that destroys books), well, they’re going to get a hug and my distracting words of love.

It helps searching the name of the person who wrote the post: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Scott "In January 2009, he formed "Archive Team",[12] a group dedicated to preserving the historical record of websites that close down. " "Jason Scott was hired by the Internet Archive in 2011" Or his about page: http://ascii.textfiles.com/about "In 1998 he started a website called TEXTFILES.COM whose original mission was to make available the thousands of BBS textfiles he’d collected in his youth, but which has now expanded greatly in all directions of computer history." Recommended video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq70QKa7588 "That Awesome Time I Was Sued for Two Billion Dollars"

http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1303 It's extremely misleading at best. It might even be fiction if you're strict enough about the facts.

> The ability for everyday man to broadcast is as big a revolution as the printing press. In the words of Jason Scott: > It is not unreasonable to say that a person putting up a web page might have a farther reach and greater potential audience than anyone in the history of their genetic line. http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2402

Jason Scott is currently heading the project along with three other members "The Board". They are doing their best to get stuff out to backers, read more about this project here: http://ascii.textfiles.com/schuyler-towne-kickstarter

This reminds me of Jason Scott's classic: "Fuck the cloud" http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1717

Point of order: A bunch of us[1] maintain the wiki. Jason just does the big, visible things, and is thus big and visible. http://ascii.textfiles.com/ is his personal blog, and is as profanity-ridden as you would expect. 1: http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=IRC_Channel

No, my argument is that it’s a weak case, full stop, that hinges on Google growing from a 400 pound gorilla to an 800 pound gorilla by outcompeting their direct competitors in their core business that the company was founded on, making deals, acquiring other businesses in areas they needed to improve upon (or reasonably thought they did) and developing new search and ad products to expand their business. You can’t punish them for making a deal ex post facto because it was the winning strategy and their competitors turned out to be the greatest cultural lobster trap inventors[1] and the Windows company that has basically stopped innovating on the web the moment they stopped perceiving it as a threat (which they were so wrong about). Google’s core business is search and advertising and they have worked from the company’s inception to acquire users and customers in both, successfully, and more so than their competition both earlier in their history and later and they have developed business partners along the way who value that continued business relationship. Making deals isn’t illegal and businesses make deals all the time. The Sherman Antitrust Act declares contracts that restrain trade and commerce illegal, but Google isn’t restraining trade: they’re paying a fair market value for user acquisition and their largest competitors both know what that price is and are unwilling to outbid Google. Up until 2017, Microsoft even had their own deal with Apple where Siri used Bing…

Much heavy lifting in design, layout, and verbiage for Infocom was done by a firm called Giardini/Russell, Inc. out of Watertown, Massachusetts. In fact, let’s just make it clear – a lot of what people think of as “Infocom” is in fact Giardini/Russell. For example: The Zork logo, the names Infidel and Deadline, and, of course, the verbiage of the advertisements I previously discussed. They wrote manual copy (some of which was then re-written by the implementors) and a pile of other stuff. The story of Infocom’s success, for all its considerable talents, is incomplete unless you realize this firm that contributed so much. That's me a few years back, in http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2172 I knew putting these up would show some rough feelings. I've done my best to keep that to a minimum - I hope that'll be the case. But be clear - G/R is EASILY one of the most important contributors to Infocom's success.

Archive link here: https://archive.is/wt7QQ And another interview with Jason Scott: https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/899

Then it became a BBS door game! https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/899

You might enjoy this : https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5509.

Details of what happened here: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5672 via HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41288051 There were several more HN threads - just search for 'Living Computer Museum' The answer to your question is, the people who made fortunes in this industry -- some of them in Seattle -- are not interested in the history of their industry, even when they made some of it. It's a telling contrast to the wonderful Museum of Flight, also in Seattle.

If you're into the ads, Jason Scott has a project going to scan all the old Computer Shopper magazines. I haven't looked to see exactly where things stand with that. http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5543 I recently started looking at ads in the old Byte magazines and among the things I was reminded of was how long the Z80 held on among the Byte crowd. And how much money (more apparent if you adjust for inflation) hobbyists and aspiring professionals were willing to spend on their hardware and software toys in the eighties. Having grown up in that time makes things like (a timely example) some people whinging about the cost of a Raspberry Pi 5 feel so irritating and inexplicable.

This was posted on here a couple months ago, fun read: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5543

I was gonna say take it up with Jason. Looks like that has been done http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3415

Which we can all now browse at our leisure thanks to the efforts of Jason Scott: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5543 Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36206526

Here’s one guys effort at something similar: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5543 Some Good comments on guillotines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36206526

I work very long hours for the Internet Archive, and I am making a huge difference in the world working for them. It wouldn’t be right or useful for me to take on any other job. I also don’t want to be doing something like making “stuff” that I sell or otherwise speculate into some market. Leave aside I have these documentaries to finish, and time has to be short. from http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5251 In a world where people are rushing to pump out AI generated content, polluting the internet, all for a buck - people like Jason also exist. What a gem of a person!

Jason Scott has a post about the relationship between his trauma and digital archiving activities: https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5443