How many problems would there be disks that got damaged or lost in the mail?
How often were those type-in programs available for download (on a BBS, or similar system) for those who cared about this issue?
If governments try and restrict this, which is effectively a manual instruction method for achieving an outcome how many other manual instruction methods for achieving an outcome would also get inadvertently restricted? I am quite curious at the basis for the question around the legality of it because that strikes me as very odd, and I'd really like to know the thought process.
I am really not sure how typing in a program that has been written on paper relates to any of those things that require standardization for interoperability.
My question was less about could they do it because governments can regulate all kinds of crazy things. It was more about why this would even come up as a thought and a proposal in your mind. Because the marketplace would actually solve for this problem all by itself. Distributing a program on media has an increased cost to it as opposed to just printing it out on some paper. Back in the day when these things were popular, if a given program was popular enough someone would write it down save it to a disk and distribute it for a nominal fee.
Should magazines also have to send someone to read the magazine to you if you have poor eyesight or don't know the language? What an odd question.
Second, why would this sort of mandate even be desirable?
I guess there's no interaction so small and unimportant that you can't find someone somewhere who wants to make a law regulating it.
Besides, nobody was forced to type anything in. People did it because they wanted to and enjoyed it. For many people, it was a large part of how they learned to program. If anyone had health concerns, they could easily just not type the programs in.
I would have strongly objected to the notion of regulation about this because it would have effectively makes publishing source code in printed form illegal. Aside from ethical considerations, that would have been a tremendous loss to society in general.
Modems we expensive and compuserve or the source charged an hourly rate. If you lived in a city with a node it wasn’t horrible but with long distance it was obscene.
I remember when analog computing came up with a checksum program to check the listing. Game changer. You could be assured your work wasn’t in vein. Pretty soon all the magazines had one and typing in the code was a way to get a cheap game compared to $30-40 for a rom game or disk. All it cost was some time at night playing with your computer. Typing in code to see your machine do something you’d never seen before. A technique or trick. A magical time.
As for including a disk with the magazines, not every computer in those days had a disk drive and not everyone owned an external drive. The people I knew with computers used a cassette tape deck to load and store programs or they'd buy plug-in cartridges.
iwanttocomment•9mo ago