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Comment by michaelmior | Hacker News Reader

> To forestall that eventuality, a local group called the Associazione Amici dell’Olivetti ELEA 9003 is raising funds

While I can understand how the nostalgia factor elicits this kind of behaviour, I can't help but think there are many better causes.

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Yeah, but there aren't that many working installations of historic mainframes in the world. By a consequence of serendipity, that school now is now the custodian of a piece of computer history. They probably can't keep it indefinitely, and will likely pass it on to someplace like a museum that will continue to maintain it in some form.

I am glad that there are people willing to keep a decent representative sample of big-iron machines in working order.

This is a fair point. I agree that I certainly wouldn't want this machine to just go into the scrap heap :)

Yeah, but that's pretty much always true. Unless you're raising money for... I dunno, rescue puppies for orphans with cancer or something, you can always say there are better causes. But that doesn't mean that this one isn't worth supporting.

Puppies with cancer is the protypical bad cause area. Malaria eradication is way more cost effective.

So you're saying you hate puppies?

Depends on how you value the life of a puppy in your area versus the life of a nameless human across the world in a country you've never been to. Human emotion doesn't always follow logical or even moral/ethical boundaries.

> I can't help but think there are many better causes.

You can say that for pretty much every charity or cause. Did you really want to say this is a total waste of money and time? If so, then I could be persuaded to agree with you.

I suppose not. Of course one could try to rank every possible cause and then we could all decide to only contribute there. That's unlikely to productive.

I guess I might retract my previous statement as I wouldn't want to see the machine disappear either. But I do often wonder what could be accomplished with such resources. This goes for myself too I certainly spend my time and money in ways that are suboptimal.

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