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Liam Quin wrote:
> Mitch Amiano [mailto:mamiano@nc.rr.com] wrote:
>
>>Even when the market thinks some old building has value, it is often more
>>economical to raze it down to the superstructure, or completely down to the
>>ground upon which it stands.
>
>
> In some countries at least, there is legislation to prevent this.
> Both in the UK and here in Canada, buildings considered to be of
> architectural or historical importance are "listed" and can't easily
> be altered. I know of several other countries where this is true.
Various local governments within the US do this as well. The distinction between that which is historically important and that which is economically viable with respect to a particular market player or players, is one which I specifically avoided making.
> We don't (yet) have a concept of historically or architecturally
> important software. I think we should, and that such software
> should be archived, along with a complete build environment and
> source, and should become public after a certain time -- say,
> 50 years. Such "dark archives" already exist for many things,
> including software, but are not legislated by governments: the
> curators of the archives decide what to save, and have no special
> authority, hence cannot usually save source code.
Too true. I have enough difficulty with people whacking out code without a smidgen of source code control, let alone trying to think about a government initiative to decide on what is good and bad.
> On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 08:29:22AM -0500, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>
>>Then there are those projects to renovate buildings that are
>>solid and were built when superior materials and workmanship were
>>cheaper and cannot be duplicated at today's prices, yet can be
>>renovated.
>
>
> Few people care about the *insides* of buildings. In the UK there
> are splendid and ancient stately homes that have been modernised
> inside. When I lived (briefly) in Italy, there were castles that
> were considered too important to modify, so that interior central
> heating and plumbing could not be installed. The danger of that
> was that people would rather let the buildings fall to ruin than
> live in them.
>
> There were other buildings in the UK that were listed, so that
> the only changes allowed were repairs and restorations that were
> "in keeping", but where the owners couldn't afford that sort of
> work. The buildings generally fell to ruin.
>
>
>>I believe there probably are products out there in
>>niches where the technology or standard was ahead
>>of its time that can now be reclaimed.
>
>
> Yes, or could be reclaimed if we didn't live in a world where
> profit came before people's needs.
>
> Best,
>
> Liam
>
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