Instructions: Paper vs. Digital

[coinoperator]

12 minutes ago, Toastie said:

What? Isn't that a black = white type of thing? Or did you guys behave badly on polls?

Oh my goodness. BASIC. Or FORTAN? ... so beautifully nice. Very structured, very efficient. I love it! Reminds me of the times when looking at three linked PDP-10's through a glass window. And believe me, the CRTs of the DEC terminals were radiating X-rays like crazy, I am pretty sure - whole room was emerged in green light ... wait, before that goes down the wrong way ...

It looked exactly like this:

 

All the best
Thorsten

 

 

This was actually CBM Basic ...

Did you know that I personally owned a PDP 11-24
Including VT100 terminals etc
OMG, my electricity bill
I scrapped the thing when the (20kilo) harddisk crashed and could no longer run RSTS-E
and the free RT11 sucks.

[ShaydDeGrai]

2 hours ago, MAB said:

This could well lead to more (unused) waste, not less. They would also need to double their catalogues, product databases, etc as for every one product, there are now two so this has an impact on time, storage, processing. They would still need to produce many sets of printed instructions as if the instructions sold out before the sets, then the sets might well end up unsold as they have no instructions. Thus they would probably print more than is needed on average to ensure no instruction shortage. Many of these extras would end up as unused waste.

Splitting the instructions from the sets would also be very bad PR. Imagine buying a set and then having to pay more for the instructions - I don't think parents would think so highly of LEGO. It would also likely lead to higher return rates for sets, as people thought that instructions were included but they weren't, and so would lead to returned but opened stock.

 

These are all excellent points.  

The "out of the box" experience HAS to be COMPLETE.  Just imagine the PR nightmare that would arise if kids are excitedly tearing open birthday/Christmas presents and the first thing they get told is that they can't actually play with it until the instructions get delivered in 3-10 business days.  For that matter, e-instructions have a similar problem, "here's your toy, you can use my phone to get the instructions as soon as I'm done taking pictures of the party, but give it back if anyone calls or texts me..."  Not quite the same as "here's that kit you wanted, go have fun!"

On the other hand, the basic suggestion did make me wonder if there's a market for Print-on-Demand perfect-bound copies of B-Model and retired model instructions.  Not everyone has access to color laser printers.  Downloaded PDFs lose a lot when printed in black and white and printing something like a Modular Building or flagship Technic Model tome would run most inject printers dry.  I wouldn't mind getting a nice hardcopy of certain instruction books for a modest fee.  I doubt the market would be large enough to make volume printing worth while (too few paper book lovers, too many books to chose from) but a print on demand service for (otherwise unavailable) instruction books over 100 pages long might be interesting - but only as a supplement to the existing paper-in-box system.

[Toastie]

27 minutes ago, coinoperator said:

Did you know that I personally owned a PDP 11-24

Oh - my - goodness. A PDP 11-24. This refrigerator sized wonder of computing power ...my knees are getting soft ...

All I personally owned was an Amstrad PCW (with an Z80 on board) running CP/M - and I managed to run MP/M on that thing. Man, Z80 machine code - I could literally talk to that thing ...

NOW BACK ON TOPIC:

I just browsed through the books/collections in the shelves in my home office under the roof, where all that LEGO stuff is as well. It is there, all on paper: Z80 machine code by Rodnay Zaks for example. None of the floppies, tape drives, hard drives work anymore. All gone. But the documentation on paper, the books, instructions, manuals are all there. Telling me what to do in what case. This is about 35 years ago. Paper is very, very happy surviving that time span, when you are treating it nicely. It was voiced here before that PDF will last for some time. True. But the data media are virtually all gone - today DVDs are regarded as >so< old school ... yes, we can backup, convert, make compatible etc. etc. Do you do that on a regular schedule? I - don't. I am freaking out every time I need a backup because something bad happened. True, my fault. But I am an average person. Not an incremental backup guru scheduling sophisticated plans ... not when I can print it out ...

Yes @ShaydDeGrai, I am also voting for paper, being in that box. What @MAB wrote is to 100% representing what I think as well.

All the best
Thorsten 

 

[coinoperator]

Topics combine however good...

PDF and datarot
If you want to be sure that your collected data is safe you will have to run backups
and backups of those backups
and put backups in different locations
and be carefull when it comes to virussus etc.

Now how many people are THAT carefull?
Lots lost allready all there digital family pictures after a crash or ransom virus
Their hardcopy pictures are however safe somwhere in house...

Most not so geeks run a HD years without even knowing that that thing as a limited life
a very limited life

So paper is more safe for the future however paper also rots in the long term

Edited October 18, 2019 by coinoperator

[Toastie]

2 hours ago, coinoperator said:

So paper is more safe for the future however paper also rots in the long term

Oh that is true ... but with the mental possibilities of an average person like me, paper stored in an average humidified, average room atmosphere, e.g., an average living room, easily survives > 100 years, particularly the high quality type paper TLG uses. There are a good number of books twice as old dumped in the campus university archives. With > 100 years and taking into consideration that the oldest instruction I have as a whole is from 1980, the probability that I will rot away before the paper instructions I have do, is 1.     

The last SSD in my laptop made it through 7 years. I was told that was foreseeable - and that I was lucky. I also own a CD from 1998 with photos (degrading visibly on the surface though, this is a long term test). Well before 1998 it is getting ... interesting. I have a floppy drive with a cool cable on the back that fits nowhere anymore, I also have an 8 inch floppy but no drive (which would not fit anywhere anymore either - I simply drove a nail through it - it looks good on the wall). DELL decided to remove the cool socket for the docking stations on my 7530 laptop - whatever that socket is called (you should have seen me trying to let the laptop pop onto the dock because I didn't even look - it "always" worked ... one of my students saw that and asked: What - are - you - doing? And you could clearly see in his face "... old man")

"Always" - that is a very interesting adverb. As the phrase "for ever" is. 

But I believe that "paper lasts for ever" is closer to the truth as "8 inch floppies provide nearly unlimited storage space".  

Have a nice weekend, folks!

Best
Thorsten   

[ShaydDeGrai]

3 hours ago, coinoperator said:

So paper is more safe for the future however paper also rots in the long term

True: inks fade; paper rots; many bugs and nematodes think of paper as a food source; contact with earth, wind, fire, water, sunlight all shorten the lifetime of a physical book.  But in most cases, these are things that can shave decades off the useful lifetime of printed media.  Digital media is lucky to have a useful life that spans decades in the first place.  For cost effective longevity, paper is hard to beat.

Now, I suppose if you're really worried about the long term you could emboss the instructions into thick sheets of solid gold (largely non reactive chemically, resistant to many radioactive energy sources, insect resistant, unique enough not to get mistaken for advertising flyer from the Sunday paper and tossed out with the recycling, etc.)  but it would probably raise the price of the average kit by several hundred thousand dollars so you get longevity, but not cost effectiveness.  

For all of our innovations in computer technology in my lifetime alone, solving the issue of long term storage and backwards compatibility of past media is probably one of the least addressed areas.  I have an old PDP-8 paper tape system in storage and I work with (young) professional engineers who didn't even know what paper tape was until I showed them a few spools one day.  I'd actually brought the samples in to give our interns a history lesson.  I brought in paper tape, punch cards, 9 track tape, 8" floppies, 5 1/4" floppies, 3 1/2" stiffies, Bernoulli discs, Zip disks, glass WORM discs, etc.  To illustrate how things had changed, I dared them to find a machine that could read any of that media in our data processing center and they couldn't even find a laptop with DVD player.  As an industry, we just keep copying our old drives to our new ones and hope we haven't forgotten something along the way; then pray that we never actually need to restore a backup.  it made me wonder where the world would be if we got hit with a massive solar flair/EMP that wiped out 99% of the hard drives in the world simultaneously.  

It's an unlikely scenario, but if it ever comes to pass, I'll be ready with a filing cabinet full of printed Lego instruction books.

And (if anyone cares) I have a stack of 50 year old (paper) punch cards that (aside from a little yellowing) have aged rather well and still read correctly in equally old equipment, I can't say the same for floppies that are only half as old.

[coinoperator]

1 hour ago, Toastie said:

8 inch floppy but no drive

Fun...
Same here.

btw
these drives had a SASI interface (no not scsi) and with some gluelogics and soldering it can connect to scsi.

back on topic

Paper will for sure last longer but I'd like to mention that my story is only there to discourage those that believe digital date will live longer.
yes it will, only if you make backups before the medium dies.

[dr_spock]

4 hours ago, ShaydDeGrai said:

And (if anyone cares) I have a stack of 50 year old (paper) punch cards that (aside from a little yellowing) have aged rather well and still read correctly in equally old equipment, I can't say the same for floppies that are only half as old.

I still have punch cards and cassette tape mixes.   I recently replaced my 1998 car with a 2019 and it doesn't have a cassette tape player. 

 

Paper would be a better solution when LEGO® is gifted to charities for less fortunate families who may or may not have capable electronic devices for their kids.